Apple Launches Service for Transferring iCloud Photos and Videos to Google Photos

[BigMcGuire]

not saying you can't, I simply prefer to have direct control. My photos are in LR Classic, I can literally go through thousands of them in a matter of seconds ... But, we all have different needs and best of all, we have choices

Yeah see.... I kinda wish I had gone the LR route. I tried it once and I knew I should have gone with it. lol. I can respect that and understand why now.

 

[rjohnstone]

I keep all my pics and files backed up to OneDrive.
Works on all my devices and having over 1TB of storage available, I see no need to use any other... especially not Google.

 

[swingerofbirch]

Haha, well look at that. Searching in Swedish actually does work! I've never even thought of trying that. Nice!

Really? Wow. I thought I was kind of making a stretch with that suggestion, but I thought maybe they localized the search to Swedish as well since I saw you were using the OS in Swedish.

Glad you found your hundar.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I keep all my pics and files backed up to OneDrive.
Works on all my devices and having over 1TB of storage available, I see no need to use any other... especially not Google.

Now that the OneDrive app handles live photos, it's the alternative to iCloud that I recommend these days. iCloud being what I usually recommend for those in the Apple ecosystem.

That said, it wasn't all that long ago that OneDrive didn't handle live photos.

 

[posguy99]

I keep all my pics and files backed up to OneDrive.
Works on all my devices and having over 1TB of storage available, I see no need to use any other... especially not Google.

Really? What service guarantee do you have? Oh, none?

 

[hagjohn]

I'm betting Apple heard about some sort of anti-trust action and decided head it off. It would be a cold day in hell before i trust Google with my pics.

 

[jz0309]

Yeah see.... I kinda wish I had gone the LR route. I tried it once and I knew I should have gone with it. lol. I can respect that and understand why now.

I used to be an Aperture user and fan, until ~ 2 years ago when it crashed on me and despite backups I couldn't revive it, decided to switch to LR ... My mother recently passed, she was 91, and I literally went through 75k photos over 90 years to create an album of ~ 200 photos that I shared on a cloud service with relatives and friends. I took me around 4 hrs to create it, if I had had to go through 75k photos on the cloud, don't know.
Cloud has its place, no question about it and the way to go to share eg photos across geos, but my originals will always be on my computer

 

[icwhatudidthere]

To say there was no loss of data would be an understatement. None of my albums transferred and the way Google Photos does editing, I had like 3-4 copies of MOST of my photos. Took me a year to remove all those copies and choose which ones I wanted to keep. Also, I did this more than 2+ years ago ... so, it may be very different than how it is now. <shrug>

That said, most of the individual photo data stayed (location data, etc):

View attachment 1738141

Thanks, that's good to see. I started seeing the metadata json files and was worried I'd have to import them manually somehow.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I used to be an Aperture user and fan, until ~ 2 years ago when it crashed on me and despite backups I couldn't revive it, decided to switch to LR ... My mother recently passed, she was 91, and I literally went through 75k photos over 90 years to create an album of ~ 200 photos that I shared on a cloud service with relatives and friends. I took me around 4 hrs to create it, if I had had to go through 75k photos on the cloud, don't know.
Cloud has its place, no question about it and the way to go to share eg photos across geos, but my originals will always be on my computer

Agreed. I have my iCloud Photo Library sitting in full on my MacBook Pro in photos (iCloud originals turned on). I'm the photo guy for our family and I've had to find pictures of people who have passed away. Agreed 100%, MUST have a local copy. I couldn't imagine doing it 100% in the cloud.

Sorry about your mother . I bet those 200 photos did her proud .

 

[BigMcGuire]

Thanks, that's good to see. I started seeing the metadata json files and was worried I'd have to import them manually somehow.

Good to hear - yeah, I don't remember having to do anything with those (but I remember seeing them). Good luck. Just an fyi, it took a LONG TIME to get into iCloud (weeks). But eventually it made it. Sometimes it'll look like it isn't doing anything but it is. Just let it do its thing.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Thanks, that's good to see. I started seeing the metadata json files and was worried I'd have to import them manually somehow.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/photos-library-too-large.2114848/post-27032882 --- my experience (long). Wow I did this in 2019!

 

[OGD114]

Strange. Did some money get exchanged somewhere? Why would Apple allow you to transfer to a competitor like this? Surely I'd just make people download their data and transfer it manually to dissuade them from leaving me.

Nah, regulators are building a case that Apple has been involved in anti-competitive activities. To mitigate potential penalties and fines, they're making improvements to reduce any perceived anti-competitiveness, like making it easier to go between platforms.

 

[zinacef]

Interesting... I am waiting for Apple to give us the feature of sharing photos with spouses. Google Photos has this feature where I can give my spouse full access to my photo stream (and me hers). Would love to have this on iCloud as my wife and I use iCloud primary now.

I see some say why isn't the reverse available? Google has a takeout feature... that's how I got my 120+GB of photos out of Google and in iCloud. ?

I share photos with my wife through Family Sharing unless I misunderstood your post and you were referring to something else entirely.

 

[DocMultimedia]

I hope Apple Photos doesn't go the way of Aperture. You never really know what Apple is thinking long term. Although I just can't imagine them doing that. Oh well. I use both anyway (I pay for lots of Google space).

 

[macjaffa]

WOW. HERE'S AN IDEA APPLE IMPLEMENT A PROPER BACKUP SOLUTION FOR ICLOUD PHOTOS

Sorry to shout but this is a MAJOR PET PEEVE and actually a downright SERIOUS risk to peoples data that Apple have neglected to implement an actual backup of your photo library. By back up I mean, a local, copy of my iphoto library. Uploading to 'another cloud provider IS NOT A BACKUP'

There are a major problems with current way they do things that stops this from being a reality. when your photo library gets 'quite large'.

let me explain:
For example:
If you have an iphone and macbook and maybe an ipad and you have a large library of photos, that could be taking up a SIGNIFICANT portion of your hard disk (500GB + ?) or something similar Some macs dont even have 500GB drives... anyway, you are using icloud photos, as I am, and I have 2TB of storage in the icloud.

You already have 'download original' ticked, so you have a local copy of your photos. It's on timemachine as well, and you can manually backup the photo.db library to anywhere on your network/backup device.

Now, in order to save expensive and not upgradable internal disk space, you decide to move your photos library to an external disk. Great. Only now you no longer have a portable laptop, you have to carry about a USB disk just to access your photos! or if you forget it, then you no longer have access to your photos. You also have to plug it in to actually use it. Also it's not clear what happens when you try to add or access the library if your drive is not plugged in.

Because mac does not let you have 2 libraries at once (you must CHOOSE the active/default library) you can't have for example a full library on external storage and a smaller optimised version of this library on the computer.

Additionally, all the photos that I take on my phone appear on my mac, full size as they get uploaded to icloud from the phone, and then downloaded to the mac.

If I tick optimised photo storage on the mac, then I solve my space issue, I also solve the above issue of being able to access my photos at all times (albeit lower res versions which is fine.... just like iphone well a laptop is a mobile device afterall) BUT, BUT , BUT I can no longer easily retreive and backup the full res version of images that originate from my iphone, or ipad as they go direct to cloud with no easy (read automatic no clicks, icloud to timemachine transfer) of full sized images.

So now I can't just back up my photos.db file as it doesn't have all the photos anymore.


Apple need to allow icloud to timemachine full res backups, or allow 2 simultaneous libraries that can be setup as 'full res copies' and 'optimised' so that when i plug in to the full res disk, it will update, just as it does now, without me having to pick one or the other by holding down a key when i start Iphoto. This makes no sense.

Addtionally for bonus points, if you have a family with ipads, and iphones, only such as kids how do they actually BACK UP their photos from their phones ?


The only way to solve this issue right now as far as I can see is to literally set laptops to have optimised libraries like a phone, then purchase a mac mini, plug in external drives, create a user account for each familiy member and set up the icloud photo sharing to download 'full copies' of images onto the eternal drives, which is now a few TB of photos data. This solves all problems above albeit an expensive way to do it. But I suppose that is the Apple(TM) Way.

 

[airdrummingfool]

I share photos with my wife through Family Sharing unless I misunderstood your post and you were referring to something else entirely.

Is this just a standard Shared Album with the same metadata limitations (i.e. no location or camera info is included)?

 

[Localcelebrity]

Huge win for data portability. Possibly done in defense of anti-trust but a win for users either way. There is nothing to me that inspires more confidence in a service than the knowledge that it has the means built-in to allow me to move my data out if I want.

 

[deeddawg]

How would it? Be specific.

Download app, sign in, let it sync the photos. What's it not accomplish? Be specific.

‎Google Photos: Backup & Edit

‎Google Photos is the home for all your photos and videos. Easily back up, edit, organize, and search your memories with the help of Google AI. • 15 GB OF CLOUD STORAGE: Every Google account gets 15 GB of storage at no cost*, 3X more than many other cloud storage services. So you can backup and...

apps.apple.com

Not something I have any interest in doing, but it seems pretty simple.

 

[macjaffa]

Huge win for data portability. Possibly done in defense of anti-trust but a win for users either way. There is nothing to me that inspires more confidence in a service than the knowledge that it has the means built-in to allow me to move my data out if I want.

sarcasm? Nothing inspires confidence like being able to move your data out......straight into another cloud provider? That' pretty confidence unspiring for me.

 

[rjohnstone]

Really? What service guarantee do you have? Oh, none?

What service guarantee do you have with any of them... none.

 

[macjaffa]

Download app, sign in, let it sync the photos. What's it not accomplish? Be specific.

‎Google Photos: Backup & Edit

‎Google Photos is the home for all your photos and videos. Easily back up, edit, organize, and search your memories with the help of Google AI. • 15 GB OF CLOUD STORAGE: Every Google account gets 15 GB of storage at no cost*, 3X more than many other cloud storage services. So you can backup and...

apps.apple.com

Not something I have any interest in doing, but it seems pretty simple.

Does this pull the full photo from icloud and upload it to google photos, and store the orig in google photos? Or does it use the optimised image on your phone in google photos, ? And i'm pretty sure google photos don't store the full image anymore unless you pay them, and they also limited the umount of previously 'unlimited' resized photos you used to be able to store. Google photos is not a serious photo storage option for anybody that actually wants to do anything other than store low res images for sharing easily.

So if this does remove the photo from icloud, and uploaded a low res photo to the google, then you are literally putting your data at risk by downsampling all your pictures to low res copies. I mean where does the orig photo go? Ugghghhh. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[zorinlynx]

WOW. HERE'S AN IDEA APPLE IMPLEMENT A PROPER BACKUP SOLUTION FOR ICLOUD PHOTOS

Sorry to shout but this is a MAJOR PET PEEVE and actually a downright SERIOUS risk to peoples data that Apple have neglected to implement an actual backup of your photo library. By back up I mean, a local, copy of my iphoto library. Uploading to 'another cloud provider IS NOT A BACKUP'

There are a major problems with current way they do things that stops this from being a reality. when your photo library gets 'quite large'.

let me explain:
For example:
If you have an iphone and macbook and maybe an ipad and you have a large library of photos, that could be taking up a SIGNIFICANT portion of your hard disk (500GB + ?) or something similar Some macs dont even have 500GB drives... anyway, you are using icloud photos, as I am, and I have 2TB of storage in the icloud.

You already have 'download original' ticked, so you have a local copy of your photos. It's on timemachine as well, and you can manually backup the photo.db library to anywhere on your network/backup device.

Now, in order to save expensive and not upgradable internal disk space, you decide to move your photos library to an external disk. Great. Only now you no longer have a portable laptop, you have to carry about a USB disk just to access your photos! or if you forget it, then you no longer have access to your photos. You also have to plug it in to actually use it. Also it's not clear what happens when you try to add or access the library if your drive is not plugged in.

Because mac does not let you have 2 libraries at once (you must CHOOSE the active/default library) you can't have for example a full library on external storage and a smaller optimised version of this library on the computer.

Additionally, all the photos that I take on my phone appear on my mac, full size as they get uploaded to icloud from the phone, and then downloaded to the mac.

If I tick optimised photo storage on the mac, then I solve my space issue, I also solve the above issue of being able to access my photos at all times (albeit lower res versions which is fine.... just like iphone well a laptop is a mobile device afterall) BUT, BUT , BUT I can no longer easily retreive and backup the full res version of images that originate from my iphone, or ipad as they go direct to cloud with no easy (read automatic no clicks, icloud to timemachine transfer) of full sized images.

So now I can't just back up my photos.db file as it doesn't have all the photos anymore.


Apple need to allow icloud to timemachine full res backups, or allow 2 simultaneous libraries that can be setup as 'full res copies' and 'optimised' so that when i plug in to the full res disk, it will update, just as it does now, without me having to pick one or the other by holding down a key when i start Iphoto. This makes no sense.

Addtionally for bonus points, if you have a family with ipads, and iphones, only such as kids how do they actually BACK UP their photos from their phones ?


The only way to solve this issue right now as far as I can see is to literally set laptops to have optimised libraries like a phone, then purchase a mac mini, plug in external drives, create a user account for each familiy member and set up the icloud photo sharing to download 'full copies' of images onto the eternal drives, which is now a few TB of photos data. This solves all problems above albeit an expensive way to do it. But I suppose that is the Apple(TM) Way.

One workaround to this is you can access your entire iCloud Photo Library at icloud.com.

But yeah, this is a bit of an annoying limitation. It hasn't hit me because I have my iMac at home hold complete, time machine backed up copies of my library, and have optimized photos set up on my Macbook. But I understand some people can't afford to have more than one Mac.

 

[Jason2000]

Thank you Apple! this is a great addition. Very nice and convenient indeed.

Not really. Why not just download the Google Photos app. It will grab the photos and start the upload immediately and not take 3-7 days.

 

[Tech198]

Huh?

Google has an authentication service to allow third party apps to do this sort of stuff. So does Apple. This isn’t unusual.

however, we treat Apple in a different ball park based on their business. the thinking is different. If Apple used auentication services other than there own, we be less likly be trusting Apple better anymore than Google.. But we do...

 

[macjaffa]

What service guarantee do you have with any of them... none.

EXACTLY. Hence my post above about the downright appalling lack of proper backup solution from Apple. They are putting peoples photos and data at risk.