As an Olympus shooter this is good to know.

But good gravy that troubleshooting path got expensive real fast. Replacing the laptop and the camera? Why not start by trying something other than Photos? It doesn’t even need to be a paid product; the Olympus software is free not to mention a good baseline since it - of all the applications - should be able to import photos without corrupting them.

Edit to add: delete on import seems pretty risky. My workflow is to import and only delete from the camera after 1) the imported photos are backed up 2) I’ve done a first pass culling.

As a photographer, I agree. Make multiple copies of the files onto the main editing computer, followed by then also backing up direct from SD to the NAS. Never format or delete your cards (the originals) before you are dead sure you have several backups visibly uncorrupted.

I may be paranoid because I used to handle footage for VFX pipelines and you just do not mess around with those kinds of files. If you lose footage, you are in big trouble.

Yeah, after you've had this problem once it seems you'd uncheck delete after import before buying a literally entirely new photography system.

My first thought was “software troubleshooting is a lot cheaper than hardware troubleshooting!” Maybe the author isn’t bound by the same economic realities as some of us are accustomed to.

I too sometimes use troubleshooting as an excuse to get new hardware I had been meaning to upgrade to.

Or stop using the camera to connect to the Mac and just take out the SD card and use a reader like most other photographers do.

This is why Apple makes so much fucking money. Because Photos (non-compatibility with anything else) is the moat.

Agreed. Proper troubleshooting technique takes into account not just just swapping out parts, but looking at likelihood and cost. Changing software is highly likely to solve the issue as well as being free and fast to check.