My dad copied iPhone photos to his Windows laptop and half would not open. He thought the files were corrupt. They were not. Apple switched to HEIC years ago and Windows users are still discovering the fallout.
- HEIC is technically better than JPEG: smaller, higher quality. None of it matters when your software cannot read it. - Windows 10 and 11 handle HEIC with the right extensions, but plenty of older programs still choke. - Fastest fix: batch-convert the backlog, because nobody should convert photos one at a time. - Switch the iPhone camera to Most Compatible for future photos; the storage savings are almost never worth the friction for a normal person.
Life is too short to convert photos before editing them. And for video files instead of photo files, ReelCut turns long recordings into captioned vertical shorts for $4.99 a video.