Well how about that. Some products that alleviate the built-in issues!
Regrettably, googling the issue didn't help in the moment.
Wish I had known about wetransfer.com or syncios.com or photo transfer app (bitwise).
The solution was part dropbox and part icloud. I had to recover the account on both software because the pw was lost. Then install on the computer and wait for the phone to upload & then download to the computer.
btw, I love dropbox. but it crashed on the iPhone 6 regularly so I had to constantly restart it and the ~140 photos/videos took forever to upload because of that.
iCloud is also stupid because if you click "download" in the windows app more than once, it downloads twice... and it will download based upon index/date not order of 'clicking' so I had to waited for everything to get downloaded twice
My main issue with most of the suggestions is they are all 'network' based, meaning using the cloud (very slow <1MB/s) or via network (somewhat slow 1-5MB/s) compared to a cable @ usb speeds (~10-30MB/s)
photo transfer app wont work with icloud turned on
[though Craig, that seems like an app designed to get around that issue]
Thanks for the suggestions all!
