Comment by alistairSH
21 hours ago
Is the benefit transferring "local" via BT instead of across the internet as a text message attachment? Because I do the latter plenty, but pretty much never AirDrop anything to anybody, even if they're sitting next to me.
AirDrop uses P2P wifi for the actual transfer which can make it significantly faster than transferring through the internet, which makes a big difference for photos, videos, and other large files. It also works out in the middle of a forest where there are no wireless connections as well as it works in the middle of NYC.
It’s great. I used it to move entire folders from my Mac to an account-less iPad with no Internet connection.
I thought it was going to be slow, but hundreds of gigabytes was fully transferred in less than a minute.
> hundreds of gigabytes was fully transferred in less than a minute.
yeah right
1 reply →
It's fast, but it's not that fast.
My son regularly borrows my iPhone 14 Pro for shooting video, and I inevitably have to do a large AirDrop transfer to him of all his footage. We usually see about 10 GB per minute, which is really fast
I used them. Compression is an issue in other protocols (sending via WhatsApp, for example). Another benefit is that photos sent by Airdrop get automatically backed up. It also works well in areas with poor internet connectivity. For example, some beaches have weak cellphone signals due to their surroundings, so when meeting friends, we generally use Airdrop.
I'm sitting in the beach with no data connectivity whatsoever, much less any WiFi network anywhere close; my partner just asked me to send a copy of the photos we just took with my phone 10 mins ago. That's the use case. Not outside reach of a WiFi or 4G network much for you, then?
Another easy example of use case is wanting to share a file during a flight or while being overseas on a boat.
I AirDrop files between my different Apple devices pretty regularly.. I guess everyone has their own system for doing things.