Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,589
39,460



Apple has updated the iCloud beta website with a new Photos section that includes improved navigation tools similar to the native Photos app on macOS Sierra. As discovered by MacMagazine [Google Translate], the Photos section in the beta site now includes a sidebar for navigation, which displays all of a user's albums so it's easier to jump between photo collections.

icloud-website-update-800x513.jpg

In the current iteration of iCloud.com albums are found in a tab bar at the top of the Photos part of the website, next to a user's moments. With the update, users are also able to choose multiple photos from the new album select toolbar "and use the action buttons in the upper right corner to add, share, download, or remove albums."

Within each album, when a specific photo is clicked on, users will be presented with a scrollable thumbnail view of the entire album's contents, providing further ease of navigating through large photo collections.

The iCloud.com updates are strictly navigational improvements, with no addition of the new macOS Sierra Photos features like Faces and Memories. It's unclear how long it will take for the new changes to launch on a broader scale after debuting on the iCloud.com beta site.

Article Link: Apple Testing Redesigned Photos Web App on iCloud.com Beta With macOS-like Interface
 
  • Like
Reactions: Goatllama
With native Photos apps on Mac, iPad and iPhone, I wonder how much use the web app actually gets. I guess it's useful if you're away from your devices, or maybe for creating sharing links?
 
I use this all the time when I'm on my work PC. It always weirded me out that it was different from both iPhone and MacOS.
 
  • Like
Reactions: aristobrat
I'd love to edit the time and geotag of some photos from the web app too though.
 
  • Like
Reactions: load97
With native Photos apps on Mac, iPad and iPhone, I wonder how much use the web app actually gets. I guess it's useful if you're away from your devices, or maybe for creating sharing links?
Good question. I wish it would be more fluid. More useful. I'd like to use windows computers then my Mac, but haven't found a streamlined way to use photos on a windows computer. Mainly that using a windows computer, Apple photos doesn't have two way syncing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: profets
Well this is a slightly positive move by Apple. Now let's really move -
1. bring faces to the web
2. sync face tags across platforms - the lack of this is a serious issue for me
3. fix the pixelmator addon bug - in macOS, using the addon inside of Photos, crashes Photos
4. put the repair tool on iOS
5. allow me to manage memories consistently across platforms - can't right now and it isn't very intuitive on any platform
7. add a dedupe feature
 
WOW! This is an amazing improvement over the previous Photos web interface. The old one would make you wait, sometimes for up to five minutes when you log in before showing you your library, or show an outdated version of your library for several minutes before finally showing you the latest photos.

This version loaded near instantly.

I may seem overly excited about this, but I use this site often when I'm on other computers and with the way Apple has been disappointing us lately in other ways, seeing something positive like this is awesome. :)
 
So someone at Apple woke up and realized they've barely touched the Photos service in forever and that Google Photos is eating their lunch. So now they will pool resources and work on this while a bunch of other projects suffer. The cycle continues.
 
Hopefully this means they're going to focus on improving iCloud + Photos, especially by giving users more storage for free (perhaps even unlimited photo storage) by iOS 11!

Wishful thinking, I know...

Until then, I'm perfectly happy with the unlimited storage I get with my Amazon Prime membership.
 
With native Photos apps on Mac, iPad and iPhone, I wonder how much use the web app actually gets. I guess it's useful if you're away from your devices, or maybe for creating sharing links?

There's a lot of people who have an iPhone but use Windows on their computers. The website is the only way to *manage* your photo collection from a Windows PC.

Yes, Apple created a Windows app that lets you access your library, but it's read-only (you can't make changes to your iCloud photo library from it), and is mostly designed as a backup tool.
 
I'd love to edit the time and geotag of some photos from the web app too though.
Take a guess why Photos is so oversimplified and Aperture is binned.

Advanced functionality is an endangered species in the Apple ecosystem, and no, it has NOT always been like that.

I'm worrying about iTunes versatility... It already has taken some hits, take a look at Get info for example...

Glassed Silver:mac
 
With native Photos apps on Mac, iPad and iPhone, I wonder how much use the web app actually gets. I guess it's useful if you're away from your devices, or maybe for creating sharing links?
I've used it at my old job when I didn't have access to my home Mac. It's also pretty handy to see for certain what's been uploaded to iCloud or not.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Goatllama
So someone at Apple woke up and realized they've barely touched the Photos service in forever and that Google Photos is eating their lunch. So now they will pool resources and work on this while a bunch of other projects suffer. The cycle continues.

Google Photos and services FTW!

I don't use any Apple services any more. Why should I pay for what I can otherwise get for free?
 
It makes sense because most people who visit the site probably won't be on a mobile device.
I wonder if it'll last or go back to Tim Cooks dream of an iPad layout.
 
With native Photos apps on Mac, iPad and iPhone, I wonder how much use the web app actually gets. I guess it's useful if you're away from your devices, or maybe for creating sharing links?

You're forgetting that a lot of iPhone owners are also PC users. This gives them a way to access their photos from a PC.
 
  • Like
Reactions: profets
I just checked it out... With over 18k photos, over 15 years, this is the closest thing to the way it should be - ever... Why has it taken this long would be my only question... No faces (or people) yet though, they can't even decide what to call that album yet... Maybe someday. At this rate they will get this down to a science by 2050
 
Hopefully this means they're going to focus on improving iCloud + Photos, especially by giving users more storage for free (perhaps even unlimited photo storage) by iOS 11!

Wishful thinking, I know...

I wish I could comment on the nature of this without coming across as judgmental. For $0.99 a month, you increase the quota by 10x. Isn't that affordable for most people? $11.88 a year. Going to a fast-food joint quite often costs more than that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Wobblytabletop
Google Photos and services FTW!

I don't use any Apple services any more. Why should I pay for what I can otherwise get for free?

Google Photos doesn't have a native client. One thing I love about Photos is having the native Photos client on my Mac that stays in perfect sync among all devices.

I wish Google would come up with a good native photo client. That's their big failing, in my opinion, another example is no native client for Google Play Music; it's all web based and they want you to use Chrome, which I don't like.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Wobblytabletop
I wish I could comment on the nature of this without coming across as judgmental. For $0.99 a month, you increase the quota by 10x. Isn't that affordable for most people? $11.88 a year. Going to a fast-food joint quite often costs more than that.
Maybe a year or two ago that would have been a justification for paying. But now that Google Photos backs up every photo and video you have for the price of $0.00, Apple must compete. You can argue all you want about how Google is giving you their service in return for your data, but that shouldn't stop Apple from outdoing them. You can also argue that iCloud backs up more than photos and videos, but realistically those are what fill up the 5Gb free storage we all get. I have since turned off photo backups for iCloud, and I have no issues with iCloud filling up. But Apple should realize that they're losing people to Google Photos and take action.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Aston441
As long as it's still my prerogative to be or not be plugged into the cloud for home computing functionality, knock yourself out Apple
 
Maybe a year or two ago that would have been a justification for paying. But now that Google Photos backs up every photo and video you have for the price of $0.00, Apple must compete. You can argue all you want about how Google is giving you their service in return for your data, but that shouldn't stop Apple from outdoing them. You can also argue that iCloud backs up more than photos and videos, but realistically those are what fill up the 5Gb free storage we all get. I have since turned off photo backups for iCloud, and I have no issues with iCloud filling up. But Apple should realize that they're losing people to Google Photos and take action.

I still can't believe that Apple won't bump the level of cloud storage to accommodate full backup of all Apple devices owned. 5GB is pathetic.
 
Maybe a year or two ago that would have been a justification for paying. But now that Google Photos backs up every photo and video you have for the price of $0.00, Apple must compete. You can argue all you want about how Google is giving you their service in return for your data, but that shouldn't stop Apple from outdoing them. You can also argue that iCloud backs up more than photos and videos, but realistically those are what fill up the 5Gb free storage we all get. I have since turned off photo backups for iCloud, and I have no issues with iCloud filling up. But Apple should realize that they're losing people to Google Photos and take action.

A lot of people are being fooled by Google Photo's "free unlimited storage" when the truth is, this is not a backup AT ALL.

Google Photos will recompress your photos into smaller versions when you use the free tier. It is NOT a backup because your data isn't being backed up, only an approximation of it. I feel sorry for people who "feel safe" that their entire photo collection is "backed up" on Google Photos; if they lose their original, all they'll have is slightly lower quality recompressed copies.

Flickr, to their credit, DOES store bit-perfect originals, but you have to deal with ads everywhere.

There's no free lunch and that includes Google Photos. That said I do wish they'd lower the cost of cloud storage, but that's not something we can control. All the companies charge more or less the same amount.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.