Lukewarm Enhancements

Tiger8 · Nov 15, 2012

Ok, this is not a hate thread, and believe me I am a huge Apple fan, especially iGadgets.

But that said, recently been having some issues with my phone and it got me to think how several features of iOS 5.00 and 6.00 have really missed the mark. No need to talk about Siri or Maps because both topics have been beaten to death. But what about:

1. PhotoStream: I love the idea, however, I don't think it is implemented in the best way possible. It has been reported that a lot of times PhotoStream MISSES some new pictures, and there is no way to manually upload them yourself so kinda beats the whole purpose. Also, it would have made sense that PhotoStream is smart enough not to store a duplicate picture on the device that took it. Now, every photo you take gets takes twice as much storage on your phone. I was at a concert and took a lot of pictures, when I got home and connected to wifi my phone ran out of storage because of photostream.

2. iMessage: I LOVE IT, but we all know it has serious issues with reliability; issues ranging from duplicate messages to ones not being delivered at all. It is unrealiable, not to be used for anything serious. A few of my friends turned it off on their phones altogether.

3. iTunes Wifi Sync with Windows: Remember that? It worked two times after doing a ritual and stopped again, yea yea blame Microsoft, but whatever, most of iPhone users have Windows PCs and apple should have done a better job with that.

4. iTunes Match: No comment

Whatever happened to 'it just works'? I feel upto iOS 4 things were prisitine and incredible, but now? I don't know

Oui · Nov 15, 2012

1. There is no duplicate storage issue only pictures taken on the device are local.
Photostream in strored umm in the cloud hence the name icloud.

2. No one I know or myself have had any issues with iMessage.

3. No issues

4. No issues and love it.

CTHarrryH · Nov 15, 2012

I think some of the OP's issues are the confusion that I think many of us have had with setup or restoring to new devices. I think Apple makes great products but terrible manuals and installation instructions. For instance the issues that I have had with iMessage have been with the default settings on new devices such as an iPad and adjusting settings between the iPad and my iPhones. There are no instructions that I have found that say: if you want this to happen you need to do these settings, etc. One of the benefits of this and other boards are those type instructions.

As the Apple world gets more complex more setup and use information is needed and is more important.

Menel · Nov 15, 2012

Tiger8 said:
Ok, this is not a hate thread, and believe me I am a huge Apple fan, especially iGadgets.

But that said, recently been having some issues with my phone and it got me to think how several features of iOS 5.00 and 6.00 have really missed the mark. No need to talk about Siri or Maps because both topics have been beaten to death. But what about:

1. PhotoStream: I love the idea, however, I don't think it is implemented in the best way possible. It has been reported that a lot of times PhotoStream MISSES some new pictures, and there is no way to manually upload them yourself so kinda beats the whole purpose. Also, it would have made sense that PhotoStream is smart enough not to store a duplicate picture on the device that took it. Now, every photo you take gets takes twice as much storage on your phone. I was at a concert and took a lot of pictures, when I got home and connected to wifi my phone ran out of storage because of photostream.

2. iMessage: I LOVE IT, but we all know it has serious issues with reliability; issues ranging from duplicate messages to ones not being delivered at all. It is unrealiable, not to be used for anything serious. A few of my friends turned it off on their phones altogether.

3. iTunes Wifi Sync with Windows: Remember that? It worked two times after doing a ritual and stopped again, yea yea blame Microsoft, but whatever, most of iPhone users have Windows PCs and apple should have done a better job with that.

4. iTunes Match: No comment

Whatever happened to 'it just works'? I feel upto iOS 4 things were prisitine and incredible, but now? I don't know

Photostream likely uses virtual pointers for the device that took the photo. No reason to have duplicate. May Apple did this, maybe not. They did it with Albums, so why not. Never seen it miss pictures.

I give you 2 and 3.

iTunse Match I love. Can create new playlists whereever. Always have access to my music, can load down a new playlist whether I'm at work, parents, girlfriend's, home, etc. An easier way to clear the cache... maybe.

phr0ze · Nov 15, 2012

1. I love photo streams. The default stream can't be adjusted, but that was there in iOS5. It does not use twice the storage. Adding additional streams allows you to place photos of your choosing into them.

2. iMessage is super reliable. If you don't have a data connection, it will default back to SMS. However if you do have a data connection, it will actually tell you when it's delivered. Meaning if it says delivered, then you know its there. Again iMessage was in iOS5. iOS6 just brings a better connection with ipads and computers, but doesn't change the reliability from iphone to iphone.

3. don't use windows but this was a feature in iOS5.

4. Match works, was in iOS5, and has become better in iOS6 with true streaming.

jordancrombie92 · Nov 15, 2012

iTunes WiFi sync barely works for me and I'm on Mac...

Small White Car · Nov 15, 2012

It's not Windows, Wifi sync sucks on Macs too, OP. I just checked and the last time mine ran was 17 days ago. I've been doing a lot of file transfers on my Mac at night recently so my Mac has been on all night with iTunes running for pretty much all 17 of those nights (which is also when my phone is plugged in).

It has yet to try and sync anytime over the last 2 weeks, apparently. This is not new, I often think about it every month or so and manually run the sync. I'm not sure "auto sync" has ever worked.

Oui said:
2. No one I know or myself have had any issues with iMessage.

Really?

iMessage has been reliable for me lately but the first few months after it came out were just terrible. I'm shocked to hear you don't know anyone who didn't have similar problems back then.

Tiger8 · Nov 15, 2012

Oui said:
1. There is no duplicate storage issue only pictures taken on the device are local.
Photostream in strored umm in the cloud hence the name icloud.

2. No one I know or myself have had any issues with iMessage.

3. No issues

4. No issues and love it.

1. Incorrect, it does actually push back the file to ALL your iOS devices and stores them locally. If you turn off photostream you get a warning that this will delete all photo stream photos from your device, and it does clear up some storage on your device.

Remember, the cloud only keeps 1000 photos or 90 days whichever comes first, but your devices keeps everything under 'Photo stream'. So yes, it does store the photos everywhere.

2. There has been several nationwide outages, some of whcih were reported here on MacRumors. Also, head to support forums in Apple's site, there are numerous threads were people had to turn off iMessage, leave it turned off, turn it on again, reauthenticate to get it working. So no, you can't say it is reliable.

JaySoul · Nov 15, 2012

I don't think iTunes Match is particularly useful or targetted at someone like me.

I'm a DJ with a huge library of music, an eclectic selection of single/albums and Match is too small and flaky for me.

If I were a "normal" person (i.e. not a music head), then I could imagine it being pretty much exactly what I needed.

But I am not normal.

bearda · Nov 15, 2012

phr0ze said:
1. I love photo streams. The default stream can't be adjusted, but that was there in iOS5. It does not use twice the storage. Adding additional streams allows you to place photos of your choosing into them.

2. iMessage is super reliable. If you don't have a data connection, it will default back to SMS. However if you do have a data connection, it will actually tell you when it's delivered. Meaning if it says delivered, then you know its there. Again iMessage was in iOS5. iOS6 just brings a better connection with ipads and computers, but doesn't change the reliability from iphone to iphone.

3. don't use windows but this was a feature in iOS5.

4. Match works, was in iOS5, and has become better in iOS6 with true streaming.

Maybe iMessage is more reliable for simple use cases, but since the iOS6/Mountain Lion update I've been experiencing a number of issues. I have an iPhone, an iPad, and an iMac all sharing the same account. A number of times one or two of the devices have received a message, but the other one is completely silent. The sender gets a delivered message since it make it to at least one device.

The read indicator has become less useful as a result, and I've had my wife send three messages in a row and missed the first two on my iMac. She got a read indicator since I saw the last one (it only applies to the most recent message), and assumed (normally correctly) I had seen all three. A couple weeks later my iMac is still missing those two messages. I found out the hard way when someone is sending you a list and you miss two items this REALLY sucks.

Bug was reported to Apple, but there's no way of check on status or if they care.

Tiger8 · Nov 15, 2012

Proof that PhotoStream duplicates pictures

Here is a small experiment:
1. Take a picture with your phone
2. Make sure a picture is uploaded to PhotoStream
3. Go Airplane Mode
4. Delete the picture from your camera roll
5. Visit your PhotoStream, the picture is still there

If PhotoStream was using pointers as claimed, photo would have disappeared from both local devices and photo stream once deleted, but like I said, it actually uploads the picture and then does a mass download to all your devices, INCLDUING the device you used to take a picture with. So for that one particular device, it is double stored.

cmChimera · Nov 15, 2012

Tiger8 said:
Here is a small experiment:
1. Take a picture with your phone
2. Make sure a picture is uploaded to PhotoStream
3. Go Airplane Mode
4. Delete the picture from your camera roll
5. Visit your PhotoStream, the picture is still there

If PhotoStream was using pointers as claimed, photo would have disappeared from both local devices and photo stream once deleted, but like I said, it actually uploads the picture and then does a mass download to all your devices, INCLDUING the device you used to take a picture with. So for that one particular device, it is double stored.

I'm pretty sure that photostream caches so you can view it in airplane mode. Images are NOT double stored.

Tiger8 · Nov 15, 2012

cmChimera said:
I'm pretty sure that photostream caches so you can view it in airplane mode. Images are NOT double stored.

And where is the cache stored?

Run the experiment with an older picture, it still keeps it in PhotoStream

cmChimera · Nov 15, 2012

Tiger8 said:
And where is the cache stored?

Run the experiment with an older picture, it still keeps it in PhotoStream

Deleting a local picture does not delete it from your photostream. If the cache is stored on the phone, we're talking about a minimal amount of space taken so that you can VIEW your photostream. Deleting a local picture does not delete it from your photostream. I'm a person that has at least 5 gigs of photos stored on his phone all the time, if the images were taking double the space I would know very quickly.

Edit: For example, without wi-fi, my mac will allow me to view all my photostream photos. It will not let me view any new photos added. It's simply caching and we're talking about an unnoticeable amount of space used.

Dinh · Nov 15, 2012

cmChimera said:
Deleting a local picture does not delete it from your photostream. If the cache is stored on the phone, we're talking about a minimal amount of space taken so that you can VIEW your photostream. Deleting a local picture does not delete it from your photostream. I'm a person that has at least 5 gigs of photos stored on his phone all the time, if the images were taking double the space I would know very quickly.

Edit: For example, without wi-fi, my mac will allow me to view all my photostream photos. It will not let me view any new photos added. It's simply caching and we're talking about an unnoticeable amount of space used.

Umm..But Caching will also take storage. Even if you compress it, a 5mb image would take around 2-3 MB atleast.

cmChimera · Nov 15, 2012

Dinh said:
Umm..But Caching will also take storage. Even if you compress it, a 5mb image would take around 2-3 MB atleast.

Uh...No. Caching is not the same as compression.

Dinh · Nov 15, 2012

cmChimera said:
Uh...No. Caching is not the same as compression.

Where do you think Cached images are stored?

cmChimera · Nov 15, 2012

Dinh said:
Where do you think Cached images are stored?

Caches are saved on the phone. However, as I just said, that is not the same as compressing every image in a photo stream and storing it on the device. You're attempting to call them the same thing but they are not.

nutmac · Nov 15, 2012

Menel said:
Photostream likely uses virtual pointers for the device that took the photo. No reason to have duplicate. May Apple did this, maybe not. They did it with Albums, so why not. Never seen it miss pictures.

Actually, Photo Stream does result in a duplicate file, albeit much smaller version (3 megapixels vs. 8 megapixels for iPhone 5).

An average 3 megapixel Photo Stream image is about 300 KB, so if your iPhone has 1000 photos in My Photo Stream (the maximum), your iPhone would have to allocate 300 MB toward additional Photo Stream image files. When you move a photo out from Photo Stream to camera roll, iPhone will download a full size 8 megapixel version from iCloud to camera roll directory (DCIM).

nuckinfutz · Nov 15, 2012

Photostream is actually pretty awesome.

If you have an issue with putting at picture in Photostream you can always upload via iPhoto on a Mac or using the iCloud Control Panel.

I've had iMessages go south but then again I've have SMS messages that were delayed by hours for whatever reason. Neither messaging technology is perfect and I'm not going to hold iMessages to a higher standard than SMS.

I don't use Wifi Sync. Why would I? I've got iTunes Match which means easy access to my music and my iOS devices manage everything else (TV/Video/apps)

thedeejay · Nov 15, 2012

Oui said:
1. There is no duplicate storage issue only pictures taken on the device are local.
Photostream in strored umm in the cloud hence the name icloud.

2. No one I know or myself have had any issues with iMessage.

3. No issues

4. No issues and love it.

Cool beans. You have no problems. That's great. Doesn't mean others' don't.

Agree with the iMessage one. It's just OK for the most part. It's also had it's fair share of problems for myself and buddies of mine. So they can definitely improve on it in my opinion. Improvements are always welcomed, not frowned upon

Tiger8 · Nov 15, 2012

nutmac said:
Actually, Photo Stream does result in a duplicate file, albeit much smaller version (3 megapixels vs. 8 megapixels for iPhone 5).

An average 3 megapixel Photo Stream image is about 300 KB, so if your iPhone has 1000 photos in My Photo Stream (the maximum), your iPhone would have to allocate 300 MB toward additional Photo Stream image files. When you move a photo out from Photo Stream to camera roll, iPhone will download a full size 8 megapixel version from iCloud to camera roll directory (DCIM).

Thank you for explaining this, now I feel that I know. I was surprised on how many people jumped on this thread telling me I'm wrong and it does not store anything and it's called umm the iCloud. I also know why I ran out of space after taking many pictures in that concert.

NT1440 · Nov 15, 2012

Tiger8 said:
Whatever happened to 'it just works'?

That was the selling line for eMac. Over a decade ago.

Stuke00 · Nov 15, 2012

Photostream definitely takes up storage. Deleting it for me saved a couple hundred MB of space. Just check your usage... it shows Photostream xxx MB next to it.

phr0ze · Nov 16, 2012

Tiger8 said:
Thank you for explaining this, now I feel that I know. I was surprised on how many people jumped on this thread telling me I'm wrong and it does not store anything and it's called umm the iCloud. I also know why I ran out of space after taking many pictures in that concert.

So many people said it doesn't store twice the data as you claimed. That was it. Of course there is some form of cache. But that's true for just about anything web based to increase performance. Sorry that some of us didn't explain the way the web works to you too.

Go back and read the actual comments. I simply said it doesn't use twice the storage as you claimed. And the other guy says that it is cloud based. While he doesn't explain caching, he is correct. Those were the only two (so many) comments that 'Jumped' on the thread and told you you were wrong. The rest were either in support or explaining caching.

My phone says 1.7gb photos. 400mb photo stream. Obviously not twice. Ohh and my ipad says 300mb photo stream. They both have identical streams. So obviously apple is doing some intelligent self clearing caching based on viewed photos.

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