I have been looking for external storage with Lightning and USB C connectors. I have lots of images that I want to show show on an iPhone or iPad or another device. I have looked for USB C female to Lightning Male adapters, but have yet to find one that is reliable for data transfer. I thought I would look for a USB flash drive with both connectors and found the SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive Luxe. The promotional video on Amazon shows it connecting to a wide variety of devices including a laptop. I have my source images available though my iMac (M1 and Monterey), so wanted to transfer the images using USB C. It seemed ideal.
I read that it needed a Sandisk app to use on an iPhone, but went ahead and bought one. With the app on the iPhone, images can be transferred to and fro. When I connected it to my iMac, the computer would not recognise it. I cannot get Finder to even show it. The Sandisk app description on the Apple App Store does not say it is compatible with an iMac, so I cannot use it. On searching the web, it appears that I am not the only one. I have now found a list, buried on the Sandisk website of compatibilities for the drive and the iMac is not on it!! The drive is useless to me.
There's a solution, though. I can put the images on an SD card, using an Apple SD card reader with USB C, and then play them using an Apple SD card reader with Lightning connector. There are USB C to Lightning cables but I do not want 1m of cable.
Just be careful if you are tempted by one of these SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive Luxes.
Jonathan
