He pretty much described the "Journal" functionality of iPhoto for iPhone/iPad. You pick the photos you want to share, create a "journal" with them, and pick Share -> Share to iCloud. From there you can email a link to the journal to your contacts. They receive a link to a really nice gallery.<p>The journals can be customized, you can change up the layout and add little text boxes and maps and neat stuff like that. It's really exactly what he's looking for.<p>As far as getting the photos onto your mac- that's what Photo Stream is for. It pulls your photos straight into iPhoto without you having to do anything. It kind of sounds like he's trying to stay away from iPhoto, but that's like arbitrarily saying "I need a solution for this, but I won't use the solution that exists, I need something else!".
This is why I recommend that people buy Android phones. Sharing media on Android is dead simple and very powerful. For example: Take a photo, go to gallery, tap share, pick how you want to share it. If you want to share multiple pieces of media, go to the gallery and long tap to select multiple items and repeat the process.<p>This "share" process is deeply engrained in the Android OS and is one of the easiest things for an Android developer to implement. When a user opens a photo, the OS sends out an "Intent" with a data type as part of the metadata. An app can register to receive the intent if it matches their supported data type. If there are multiple apps registered for a particular data type, the OS shows a list for the user to select which app should complete the operation.
> <i>Apple’s supposed to be the best at designing simple user experiences across hardware and software – and I believe they are.</i><p>As much as Apple is praised for simple user experiences, there's a lot about my mac that bothers me. For example, when I am browsing through photos in Preview (with arrow keys) and I come across one I do not want, I should be able to hit the delete key to delete the photo, but no, I can't do that. I have to stop browsing, find the photo in the side bar, right click and select 'Move to Trash'. Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit. I understand this is a design decision, but it just seems counter-intuitive, as does much else with this computer. Things like this annoy me all day long.
> Even dragging out the USB cord to plug my phone into my MacBook Pro doesn’t yield a simple solution. Open iTunes, iPhoto, etc. – haven’t found the answer.<p>There's an app called Image Capture, installed on every Mac, that lets you easily download certain photos and videos from your iPhone (or any other camera). It simply presents a list of media on your device, which you can save in any location you want. There's no organizational aspect, unlike iPhoto. Image Capture doesn't help with the uploading/sharing part, of course, but it's much more streamlined way of directly downloading photos versus iPhoto.
Photos has 2 levels of drill down.<p>List of Albums -> Album -> Photo.<p>There are 2 share buttons. One at the album level and one at the photo level.<p>The Album share lets you select multiple pictures for sharing. Does not appear to work with multiple movies :(
This argument is correct, if a bit theatrical. The existing options aren't bad.<p>#1: Have patience. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304371504577404180417927436.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230437150457740...</a><p>#2: Deal with the fact that Facebook won and all of your family <i>is</i> on it and go to iPhoto, select some photos, and click Share -> Facebook.<p>#3: Go to iPhoto, select some photos, and click Share -> Email and mail them to your relatives, all of whom most certainly have e-mail.<p>#4: Navigate to minus.com, drag photos onto page, done.<p>#5: Batch MMS/iMessage, and then call mom.
The new Facebook Camera app addresses some of these issues: you can select multiple images from your camera roll, tap a button, and send them to an album.<p>Yeah, some people have non-FB-using family members or privacy concerns. For most people, however, this is where sharing is headed IMO.<p>The author seems to want "his cake and eat it too ... for free". I'm not sure where you'll get cheap/free storage that (a) keeps up with megapixel growth, (b) is easy to use, (c) uploads fast in the background with no waiting, (d) doesn't require the recipient to sign-up for anything, and (e) is run by a benevolent CEO who cares about your privacy more than his/her startup's growth.
You've been able to upload a YouTube video (and make it unlisted, which makes it about as private as a Dropbox link) directly from the photo gallery since the iPhone could shoot video. Other than the fact that it doesn't compress in the background, that meets all of this guys' requirements. It's kind of interesting that the biggest video sharing site in the world somehow gets lost in this discussion.
One solution outside of facebook is services like yogile, where anyone can add to an album without creating an account , as long as the album owner has one. The flaw is the lack of iPhone or android apps, and no external API to hack that in a clean(approved) way.
I know the guy is an Apple user, but on the Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.0, you can select as many photos/videos as you want from the gallery to share.<p>1) Select images/videos<p>2) Click share<p>3) Select your option (such as gmail)<p>4) Automatically attaches those to the email for you.<p>Kind of surprised the iPhone doesn't already have that built in for multiples.
"Batch" does a pretty good job of allowing you to send groups of photos to friends and family. I don't think it supports videos, but for a photos-only solution, it's pretty good.<p><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/batch/id470069919?mt=8" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/batch/id470069919?mt=8</a>
I'm willing to bet the problem is not technology but politics; more specifically stigma surrounding file sharing. Making it easy for users to share their own files with friends and family, and you are making it easy to share copyrighted material.<p>One Apple opens the gates, they will be very hard to close.