What is the easiest way to download photos from iPhone 8 (16.7) to mac running Mojave (so no finder sync)? Options that I do not want - iCloud (in the case one does not pay), iTunes (insanely complicated). Funny enough it seems way easier to copy photos from iPhone connected to Windows than macOS.
How would the answer change for the combination of iPhone 15 and a mac with Mojave?
Image Capture has been around for quite a while. I can only test with Ventura and an iOS 16 iPhone & iOS 12 iPad.
Connect your phone using a cable and unlock the phone. It should then be visible in Image Capture.
Depending on how many photos you need to transfer, the free iCloud tier gives you 5GB of space for a shared Photos library. However remember it's shared with all the other iCloud enabled apps.
Mojave is fine with iOS 16.
Windows needs you to dig down into the phone's directory structure - I'd hardly call that 'easier'. Newest versions actually now mimic Apple's Photos.
iTunes doesn't deal in photos, except for sync from Photos. To all intents & purposes, the newer Finder sync/transfer options are exactly the same as the older iTunes, just without the music bit.
To download them to your Mac use Photos.app or its underlying mechanism Image Capture, which gives you more choices [both in Applications].
Warnings will mean you must first 'trust' the Mac, then unlock the phone.
If you are OK with buying 3rd party software, the best one I found is called Photosync. It uses a combination of a phone app and host app on your Mac.
It transfers over WiFi so both devices have to be connected to the same network.
I used to use it back in 10.14 but I don’t know how to obtain older versions of the host app so you may need to contact the vendor.
If you're transferring small numbers of photos (whatever "small" might mean to you), I find Apple's AirDrop easy to use and already built in to macOS and iOS.
