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Apple's 'My Photo Stream' Service Shutting Down in July 2023

hmm... I stuck with Photo Stream because I liked the fact that whenever I take a photo on my iPhone it would automatically upload to the stream and then on my Mac it would download a full resolution copy of the photo to my Photo Library. I have my photo library saved on an attached raid for redundancy. It would do this even when my Mac was asleep due to Power Nap.

Is this something that iCloud Photos can do? or do I have to manually download the photos to my Mac's Photo Library?
 
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Mizouse said:
hmm... I stuck with Photo Stream because I liked the fact that whenever I take a photo on my iPhone it would automatically upload to the stream and then on my Mac it would download a full resolution copy of the photo to my Photo Library. I have my photo library saved on an attached raid for redundancy. It would do this even when my Mac was asleep due to Power Nap.

Is this something that iCloud Photos can do? or do I have to manually download the photos to my Mac's Photo Library?
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That's kinda how I used it. I would go out places take photos with my iphone, when I got back home I would see the photos on my desktop and use that to post them to various places online. No need to re-save the photos elsewhere because they lived on my iphone, which I backed up to my NAS. Don't need to fully sync my photos everwhere either because I'm always generating new content.

Oh well I'll figure out a new method to this.
 
tripsync said:
And? You said " It can’t get any easier than that.". It absolutely can.



What do you mean no? Your photos do expire after 30 days. It's been like that since the beginning.



If you're only using photostream for photos you'll never save long term and you refuse to pay for iCloud, it's quite a niche function.
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The photos save permanently on your Mac. They don’t expire in 30 days. The use case is for people who don’t wish to store their entire library in the cloud but want photos from their phone to immediately back up on their Mac. A very useful feature.
 
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avalon68 said:
The photos save permanently on your Mac. They don’t expire in 30 days. The use case is for people who don’t wish to store their entire library in the cloud but want photos from their phone to immediately back up on their Mac. A very useful feature.
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Wouldn’t you need to manually save the photos you wished to keep from the photo stream into the photo library local to the Mac?
 
jtm666 said:
Nope - automatically adds to the local photo library on iMac photos (or used to!)
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Apple suggests:

“My Photo Stream will upload your most recent photos (except Live Photos) so you can view and import them to all of your devices.”

It seems to suggest a manual import is required to keep a copy of a photo.
 
avalon68 said:
The photos save permanently on your Mac. They don’t expire in 30 days. The use case is for people who don’t wish to store their entire library in the cloud but want photos from their phone to immediately back up on their Mac. A very useful feature.
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which still requires a manual process for video as photo stream doesn't support video. you're still manually backing stuff up.

the use case for a person who has an iPhone + a Mac, who doesn't want to pay for iCloud storage, who wants to be able to access last 30 days of photos on any portable device but does not mind not being able to access older photos than that unless they manually manage the older photos, who is willing to manually backup videos, who is willing to manually manage on-storage photos on each device, is an incredibly niche group. not worth Apple's engineering effort to maintain it perpetually.
 
tripsync said:
which still requires a manual process for video as photo stream doesn't support video. you're still manually backing stuff up.

the use case for a person who has an iPhone + a Mac, who doesn't want to pay for iCloud storage, who wants to be able to access last 30 days of photos on any portable device but does not mind not being able to access older photos than that unless they manually manage the older photos, who is willing to manually backup videos, who is willing to manually manage on-storage photos on each device, is an incredibly niche group. not worth Apple's engineering effort to maintain it perpetually.
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I don’t record videos so that doesn’t bother me. I literally never intervene - it backs up my photos. I actually do pay for storage on I cloud - I just don’t want my photo library stored on it. It’s a waste of cloud space to have decades of photos on there. I want to store them locally
 
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avalon68 said:
I don’t record videos so that doesn’t bother me. I literally never intervene - it backs up my photos. I actually do pay for storage on I cloud - I just don’t want my photo library stored on it. It’s a waste of cloud space to have decades of photos on there. I want to store them locally
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I’m still a bit puzzled as to how it’s automatically backing up your photos that are in photo stream. Photo stream even appears as a separate menu item in the photos app on a Mac. Are you saying that any photo that appears in photo stream also appears in photos menu item automatically?
 
orionquest said:
That's kinda how I used it. I would go out places take photos with my iphone, when I got back home I would see the photos on my desktop and use that to post them to various places online. No need to re-save the photos elsewhere because they lived on my iphone, which I backed up to my NAS. Don't need to fully sync my photos everwhere either because I'm always generating new content.

Oh well I'll figure out a new method to this.
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I think NAS is the best option here. I am actively looking for an alternative storage platform either online or offline..
 
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mrochester said:
I’m still a bit puzzled as to how it’s automatically backing up your photos that are in photo stream. Photo stream even appears as a separate menu item in the photos app on a Mac. Are you saying that any photo that appears in photo stream also appears in photos menu item automatically?
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Yes, it always has. Really convenient feature
 
tripsync said:
don't really know who tidbits is. seems anecdotal?

1000 pictures is generally not even 5GB unless you shoot all in RAW.
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They’ve been around as long as Macrumors. They are associated with a lot of the personalities of the Mac world. Check em out. Macrumors and Tidbits is all I read for Mac news because between the two they cover everything. Yes it’s anecdotal but the guy that said it has been covering Apple for 20+ years and generally has a respected opinion.

Exact numbers aside, it still seems like 5GB is insultingly low in the year 2023 for any amount of data storage. Why offer any for free at all?
 
iCyprus said:
I think NAS is the best option here. I am actively looking for an alternative storage platform either online or offline..
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If you set up a NAS, couldn’t you setup a SMB server on it so that you can connect to it through the files app? This way you could connect to it through the files app on iOS or iPadOS and manage it on Windows or MacOS too.
 
As I understand it when you turn on iCloud Photos all of your photos and videos will get splatted to all your devices. So if you have a lot of photos then all your devices will be full with no spare storage and you will need more hardware. Is this Apple’s plan? What am I not understanding?
 
GBstoic said:
As I understand it when you turn on iCloud Photos all of your photos and videos will get splatted to all your devices. So if you have a lot of photos then all your devices will be full with no spare storage and you will need more hardware. Is this Apple’s plan? What am I not understanding?
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You aren’t understanding the ‘optimise iPhone/iPad/Mac storage’ option.
 
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avalon68 said:
I don’t record videos so that doesn’t bother me. I literally never intervene - it backs up my photos. I actually do pay for storage on I cloud - I just don’t want my photo library stored on it. It’s a waste of cloud space to have decades of photos on there. I want to store them locally
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I'd say you are part of the 0.001% of all iPhone customers who has never recorded videos on an iPhone. Again that's a very niche group that Apple doesn't want to spend engineering resources on.
 
CarAnalogy said:
Exact numbers aside, it still seems like 5GB is insultingly low in the year 2023 for any amount of data storage. Why offer any for free at all?
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When iCloud was announced, they wanted all apps to sync the metadata to the user's iCloud so that users can use the same app on multiple devices without friction.

Had Apple charged for 5GB, developers would likely roll their own solution and might ask the user to pay extra for syncing.

5GB is more than enough for data syncing for thousands of apps and that is still true today.
 
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mannotcool said:
If you set up a NAS, couldn’t you setup a SMB server on it so that you can connect to it through the files app? This way you could connect to it through the files app on iOS or iPadOS and manage it on Windows or MacOS too.
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Yes you can. They also have a files service that is cloud synced. Personally I’m wary of cloud sync. Better to use a VPN. You can even port forward and use the VPN on the Synology itself but it’s better if the VPN is separate.

With all the data breaches, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are about the only cloud data services I trust.

But Synology hasn’t had any major security issues in many years that I can recall. Just keep the NAS up to date.
 
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TigerNike23 said:
God I hope so. But I’m sure it’ll happen over someone’s dead body.

It seems like all this version of Apple cares about is how to make the most money, not how to improve the user experience (which more often than not would make money too).
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Agree. If Apple cared about storage and user experience, it would not have kept with the measly 5Gb "free" tier for so long.
 
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