Photos, Picasa, Dropbox, iTunes, iCloud, iCloud Drive... trouble, confusion...

My wife runs several online shops. She uses a Canon digital SLR to take photos, inserts the card into her computer and it used to just open a box to choose what to do. I think she had it set to always just open in Picasa BUT...
She had a problem with her iPhone. It had over 7G of photos on it and is a 16G phone, there was not enough space to even update, she was having to delete photos in order to take more.
iTunes, iCloud, and iCloud drive are maddening to me, I just don't have the time or patience to learn to use them. I was trying to get her photos backed up but I added iTunes to her computer and it now tries to take over. I installed Dropbox but am going to have to buy the premium version before continuing her sync because you get 2G free and she had over 7G on her phone. I THINK that they all downloaded from her phone to her computer but have not synced because, like I said, I stopped the sync because of space.
So, the other day she, not knowing what to do, deleted her "my photo stream". It had over 1700 pictures but I think the pictures are on the computer waiting to be synced to Dropbox... I think.
So today she took some pictures of new items. She put her card into the computer and iCloud tried to take over, Dropbox loaded them and Picasa was no where to be found unless you opened it, there was no option to "open with" with a right click on the drive (card) folder... like usual. So there was stress and trouble.
Does anyone who works with photos, cameras, and phone pictures have a way to simply explain what to do? She needs to save her iPhone photos, delete them from the phone regularly, have photos taken with the digital camera load and easily be used in Picasa. I understand a little, but just enough to cause trouble, she wants to just turn it on, plug it in, and have it work.
 
I am about ready to ditch iTunes, iCloud, and iCloud Drive it is almost like Apple intentionally makes things hard to use. Perhaps it is just me but I have never quite understood iTunes nor have I ever been able to easily get it to do what I want it to do.
I think I need to upgrade her to Dropbox premium and add the Dropbox APP to her phone but she is at the point of, OK... I can get this to work, "Don't do anything else". ..but unless I upgrade DB it is not going to have room to sync al those photos and if I don't add the app to her phone she wont be able to access them from there, right? I wish I had just left it alone.
 
Anyway... if you can help or know where or what for me to read or view... thanks.
 
Julien
 

Thanks Craig. I do not put any music on my phone nor does she. I do take photos etc so I think I am going to see if I can do away with iTunes, iCloud, iEverything, and just use Dropbox. It easily holds all my photos. If she has to pay 10 bucks a month for easy... it is well worth it. There is nothing quite like having an unhappy woman in the house. I'm serious, I really don't care if it costs a little as long as it is EASY and works. I'll get a 20G (or so) thumbdrive and keep her pictures backed up so if anything I will be the hero and not the villain! As they say, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", lol. She seems to be figuring DB out so I think that will be the best bet.
 
J

MakeShift
Can't you just plug your iPhone into your computer, open it as a device, copy and paisted them all into a "Pictures" folder, and then delete them off your iPhone. Check to make sure that they are on your computer before you delete them from the phone.

Yeah, I don't have a problem... but my wife, well that is another story.
Can I delete the pictures off my phone, are the saved, why is there a camera roll and my photo stream? I don't have enough room for this update (or the last one). I need to go take a course and learn how to do this.
 
ARRRGGGHHHHH, now things don't work like they did... what did you do?? Wel, let me take a look.. NO! Just never mind.
 
I'm sorry. It's OK.
 
Geez.
 
I think it will be OK, until the next time she turns her computer off and back on. I will try to fix it so that iTunes is GONE.
Like I said, I really don't have a problem. I should have left it all alone, you'd think I would learn. I have been married since 1978 and raised two daughters.. you'd think I would have learned by now, lol.
 
Actually, I thought think that this is a problem that more meds might will help !
 
J
 
 

hmm... if one of the uploader apps is being a jerk and you don't want it to automagically start screwing around before you remove it try booting into Safe Mode and uninstalling the program. Safe Mode should prevent it from automatically screwing around.
 
I'm probably missing the point.
 
PS: CCleaner is a good program for removing stubborn creepoid programs that leave bits of crap on your system after you've "uninstalled" it.

I don't even know what the Cloud is... does it use a little bit of everyone's computers or is it a bunch of servers or what? A humongous hard drive somewhere? My ex-son in law works for Google. He told me that they have enormous SSDs, way bigger than anything available on the consumer level. They also pick their employees up at their homes, drive them to work, have a chef make lunch everyday, then drive them back home. It is about a 45 minute drive one way from his house. Google is decadent. They have a cloud too! I should ask him what exactly is it?
I have 100+ year old receipts and letters from my great grandparents... I suspect 100+ years from now there will be nothing left from this era, it will all get lost to some "glitch" or hacker. No photos, no records, no nothing. Like anyone will care.
 
J

The cloud is just marketing speak for servers. There's no single cloud nor does it work like torrenting (which does store scattered data on end users systems for a larger community to access). Really THE "cloud" doesn't exist... the media and corporations just want you to think it does because it sounds cool and makes everyone feel like they're living in an episode of the Jetsons. That way people are convinced they are working hard to provide us will all this cool awesome futuristic stuff we should totally fork over all our cash for.
 
Meanwhile most of this crap has been around for decades. All they've really done is change how we poke at it all, made it shinier and made sure everything is hooked up to everything else ALL THE TIME!!
 
Don't get me wrong... I love technology but the marketing hoopla really is ridiculous. Whar flying cars? WHAR?!
 

I don't recall how to get to it at the moment, and am about to start a recording session with some guy that has a twitchy lip and does Elvis tunes, but look into the options for each of those 'helpful' utilities that are fighting each other to automatically take any particular course of action when a memory card is detected, and see if you can remove whatever tells it to stick its nose automatically in your business and take over the world.
 
Windows has auto-options as well, like when it asks you what action you want to take when it detects a blank CD or DVD, etc....
 
I HATE those automatic programs - specially if I have multiple choices - like your situation here.
 
Bob Bone