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

[CarAnalogy]

Apple really needs to up the free iCloud storage to at least 10GB.

5GB was considered low when they first set it to that, what, twelve years ago?

Now it’s just completely obvious that the only reason it’s that size is that it’s just enough to back up a new iPhone, and just small enough that as soon as that user starts getting data on the phone they care about, suddenly the backup costs money. Which they are conveniently sent a notification about, since their phone had been successfully backing up.

 

[skippingrock]

Not happy with this move at all. I shoot a lot of images and videos and really loved that I can get access to a photo that I just took on my Mac or other device within seconds. My Photo Library would never fit into the stream even at 2TB, I'm a semi-professional photographer and used photostream to quickly make my workflow easier. Many times I need a photo of something that I don't really want to stay in my Photo Library but I need to take a picture of something to insert into a document I'm writing. Take the picture with the iPhone, insert with Pages and done.

I also don't like that iCloud storage is not backed up with Time Machine. There was a recent horror story with one long-time Apple Developer that lost all of their photos and Apple wasn't going to do anything about it until they went public about it because he was using a Public Beta of macOS.

Blog - Extreme Data Loss - Business Operations Temporarily Halted

Canadian shareware / software for Macintosh and Windows

www.koingosw.com

All said, they need to do quite a few things before I trust going to iCloud Photos. I just finished recently removing all the stored iCloud Photos that were stored without my permission when I set up my new MacBook Pro.

 

[retta283]

The 5GB storage of the free account is absurd. I usually don't rag on Apple for skimping on storage and memory (because they've been doing it for decades, no one seems to remember that when OS X came out the current iMac model couldn't even install it, not enough RAM) but this is flatly ridiculous. Surely Apple has the infrastructure necessary to bump everyone up to 10 or 15GB at this point, but they're being cheapskates about it. Google's 15GB is acceptable, and I'm pleased with it as a free user, but 5GB is paltry.

I think OneDrive is stuck at 5GB free too, which is equally insane. I've heard from others that their pricing for more storage is fair, but they're still sticking with 5GB for the free accounts.

 

[Berti10]

The great thing was, that it was 30 days or 1000 photos. BUT, if you took 2000 photos in that 30 days they were there and if I might remember correctly, that if you took e.g. 800 photos in 30 days, you had your last 1000. great feature I used a lot back in the day

 

[jz0309]

Had totally forgotten about that feature, it was nice in the early days though.
Went into settings to turn it off.

 

[RickDEGH]

Oh, great. Not only do I now have to upgrade my iCloud storage to 2TB to be able to store *all* my photos (since I can't tell it to only do a subset, as far as I know), but my internet data cap will be *killed* as my computer tries to upload everything at once.

Talk about an expensive change

A 1,000 photos suddenly made you realise you need the next tier? C’mon

 

[phillyman]

I'm a huge proponent of the Photostream and for me it is a pure money grab. I have the .99 cent iCloud but I don't want to have all my pictures in the cloud. For me photostream was the perfect backup solution. I'd have multiple local synced copies between iPad and iPhone. The mac would with my main photos library would download a copy into my main library.

I'm fine with getting rid of photostream IF apple would not count the first 1000 pictures towards an iCloud account (even the free ones). I've had too many people pay apple for icloud services they more or less don't need just because the message your cloud storage is full (with the full icloud phone backup activated).

Again each their own but this just feels like a money grab. I know people will say ... Nothing is free and apple can make money, but they do that with their more expensive products we all enjoy; giving us a little something on the icloud side does not kill them. Most of us upgrade at some point anyway for extra features. Just make them compelling and not punitive.

Philly

 

[Aquaporin]

I hate that Apple just treats the iPhone as needing a $30/month subscription to access all the other services available. And when you don’t subscribe they use dark patterns to get you there.

 

[sananda]

It might have been useless to some people, but I personally liked the fact that when I took a photo on my phone, it showed up on my computer

Me too. Except I like them showing up on my iPad. In a way that didn’t mean all my iPhone photos don’t intermingle which the photos I have curated in Photos (well still iPhoto on my Macs!!).

Anyway I’m a niche user..

 

[azpc]

PhotoStream was a popular feature with a lot of switchers! Take a photo on your iPhone and it appeared on your Mac. Nothing comparable on Windows.

 

[dominiongamma]

It might have been useless to some people, but I personally liked the fact that when I took a photo on my phone, it showed up on my computer - WITHOUT having to pay for the privilege of having all 18,000 photos in my library stored in the cloud.

Without paying is the problem, and people like you are the issue thinking you can upload 18,000 pics and not have to pay anything, when Apple has to store everyone’s videos and pics.

 

[Yumbo]

It might have been useless to some people, but I personally liked the fact that when I took a photo on my phone, it showed up on my computer - WITHOUT having to pay for the privilege of having all 18,000 photos in my library stored in the cloud.

Limit 1,000.
No videos.

 

[Yumbo]

The best free feature is Photo Sharing.
Includes videos.

 

[tripsync]

Apple really needs to up the free iCloud storage to at least 10GB.

5GB was considered low when they first set it to that, what, twelve years ago?

Now it’s just completely obvious that the only reason it’s that size is that it’s just enough to back up a new iPhone, and just small enough that as soon as that user starts getting data on the phone they care about, suddenly the backup costs money. Which they are conveniently sent a notification about, since their phone had been successfully backing up.

5GB is paid for by the price of the device. 10GB would only increase the price of the device. Since I already pay for 2TB, I rather not increase the free storage. 10GB doesn't even change anything for most people. 5GB is more than enough for metadata and was never meant to host all of your photos or do full iPhone backups.

 

[SFjohn]

I totally forgot it was a thing. I just checked on my iPad and I have some great photos there! Glad there was a notification here. I’ll have time to move them into my main photo library… 👍🏻

 

[JosephAW]

Used to use that as a emergency backup of my recent photos.

Hoping they don't eliminate shared albums, I have a lot of those with family photos and vacations.

 

[zorinlynx]

I see so much whining about the default 5GB limit, I don't think people understand why it's there and so low.

The reason for the 5GB limit is so that Apple doesn't end up with millions of abandoned accounts with more than 5GB of abandoned data in them for all eternity. They need to charge a small amount to make sure people are actually using their accounts.

Think about it.. If 50GB were free, someone might switch to Android, abandoned their 45GB of photos in their iCloud and that space is now used forever. If it costs $1 month, the person will stop paying for it and the data can eventually be removed.

The lowest tier is only $1 a month for 50GB. That's $12 a year. It's not expensive.

 

[TVreporter]

I have an iPad mini that still uses this - annoying.

Anyone else miss the iPhoto app? Still found it much better for organizing photos than Photos.

 

[TigerNike23]

they can afford to give 5gb cloud and 64gb storage . why wouldnt they? people buy it anyway, there is no real alternative to apple

This is one instance where the EU should come in and force Apple to open up system level backups to external cloud systems.

iCloud is a monopoly.

 

[russell_314]

Apple discontinues these services when they see very few people are using them. I’m sure when they discontinued 2G, there were a few people that were really upset but that’s how technology goes. I didn’t even know photo stream was a thing.

As for iCloud you can get 50 GB for $12 a year. People stop being super dramatic about spending $12 a year. Y’all will spend $700+ on an iPhone plus paying for a data plan but can’t bear to spend $12? For me that’s a stupid cheap price to know that I can have my phone completely destroyed or stolen then once I get a new phone, it’s an exact clone of the old one. I’ve had multiple friends that lost their android phones and lost everything. I couldn’t imagine losing the data on my phone.

 

[Foxglove9]

I use Photostream often. I never use iCloud Photos because it constantly nags me I am out of storage. I have it shut off on all 6 of my devices as well as all my families phones.

The 5 GB cloud limit should be per device, not per account. It's annoying trying to manage what to save on the cloud and what I need to shut off to save space. Guess I'll have to live with it.

 

[russell_314]

This is one instance where the EU should come in and force Apple to open up system level backups to external cloud systems.

iCloud is a monopoly.

You do realize that you can back up with Google photos or Amazon Photos, right? Also, there are apps like dropbox where you can use them instead of iCloud to store your files.

If you do that, then you don’t even need to pay for iCloud. Of course you have to pay for Google photos or dropbox. If you go over there minimum allowed for the free plans

 

[CPx]

It was a clumsy product, not surprised to see it go. iCloud is much easier to manage and explain to your mom.

 

[fluffy]

Dangit. I use My Photo Stream extensively, to quickly access recent photos on whatever computer I'm using, rather than having to get out my sync cable and do a full library sync. I guess I can just use AirDrop instead but that's still extra steps and also very annoying because My Photo Stream also made it easy to get the image as a JPEG rather than an HEIC.

Add me to the list of people who is not willing to spend $10/month for 2TB of iCloud Photos storage.

 

[msackey]

My photo library is just under 6 TB so I won't be enabling iCloud Photos.

I create two photo libraries in the mac version of the Photo app. The main one is intended to hold all photos and does not sync with iCloud. The other one syncs with iCloud. Every so often, I download photos that are synced to iCloud then import them into the main photo library. Then, I delete them from iCloud.

It’s not the smoothest system but it’s what works because I don’t have infinite iCloud storage. I currently pay $1/month for 50gb on iCloud, a reasonable sum. The next level up is 200gb at $3/month which is way more than I am willing to pay right now.