Ask Paul: June 19 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here is an absolute marathon of thoughtful questions and hopefully decent answers to kick off the weekend.
Switching to iPhone
jbinaz asks:

Does the stuff in your "iPhone for the Windows Guy" article(s) still hold up? I'm about through with Google and their lack of respect for privacy, and thinking about jumping to iOS. (Of course Apple has their own issues, but more on the developer side, not the consumer side, and I'm pretty sure their issues will be straightened out by regulators soon enough.)

This is one of those grass is always greener things. There are very real issues for users on iPhone, some of which are tied to the developer issues (like we can’t buy Kindle ebooks in the Kindle app, etc.) and some of which are just app being unsophisticated (like we can’t arrange the home screen icons wherever we want as is possible on Android). And don’t get me started on the lack of default app configuration.

There’s one other consideration if you use Windows. Because iOS is so closed, almost none of the awesome stuff in the Your Phone app in Windows 10 works with iPhones. It’s all for Android only because Apple locks third parties out.

So just be clear-headed about the problems with the closed ecosystem there.

That said, it’s at least possible on either Android or iOS to mostly ignore the lock-in stuff/first-party apps and use the app/services you prefer. I didn’t get too far into the "iPhone for the Windows Guy" stuff but I think it’s mostly still accurate today.

I'd like to be able to keep all my contacts in Outlook.com, but use those on an iPhone to identify people in calls, messages, etc., instead of Apple's contacts. Sounds like that worked before, but is that still true? Any major "gotchas" I should consider before jumping off the Android ship (besides the more limited ability to customize my phone, and having to buy things like Kindle books, music and movies outside apps)?

This will work. I think this is a good example of one thing that has changed, if I remember correctly: The users you access from Outlook.com in the Microsoft Outlook app should populate the phone contacts list now. If not, you can still configure contacts/Phone/Messages to use your Outlook.com account.
Digitizing photo albums
StevenLayton asks:

After sorting through our family home, my brothers and I have inherited dozens of large photo albums capturing not only our childhoods, but also that of our parent's as well. I remember a while ago you documented as you embarked on a project of scanning and organising lots of your own photo albums. I remember you used some form of scanning device that sped up the process for you. Would you mind either point me in the direction of that article, or let me know the name of the device you used?

The article is Digital Decluttering: High-Speed Photo Scanning, and the scanner I used was a used/refurbished Epson FastFoto FF-640 High-Speed Photo Scanning System. Note that you...