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Maybe Apple will announce an increase to 15GB for free storage next month?
One can only hope.

Most on here would just say “pay the extra $$$” or back up to iTunes/Mac. I can pay the extra and do, but not everyone can pay the extra money or has a computer anymore. Guess they’re just SOL.
 
I really hope this is a sign more iCloud storage is coming soon. In 2023, 2TB is not enough.
Yeah, and it never was. I only use Photos for my phone pictures (which is about 1 TB) and still have my "real" photos in Lightroom because they simply won't fit.

I don't get it at all. Offering more iCloud storage in 2 TB chunks seems like a more or less "free" way to increase revenue for services, and increase customer satisfaction at the same time.
 


Apple's "My Photo Stream" service is set to shut down on July 26, 2023, which means customers who are still using that feature will need to transition to using iCloud Photos prior to that date.

icloud-photos.jpg

My Photo Stream is a free service that uploads the last 30 days of images (up to 1,000) to iCloud, making them accessible on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. It predates iCloud Photos and has largely been replaced by the iCloud Photos service at this point.

Going forward, Apple plans to have all customers use iCloud Photos instead of My Photo Stream. New photo uploads to My Photo Stream will stop on June 26, 2023, and images will remain in iCloud as usual for 30 days until the shutdown point.

Because all of the images in My Photo Stream are stored in their original format on at least one Apple device, there isn't a danger of photos being lost as part of the shutdown process. Apple recommends that users who want to have their images on a particular device save them to the Photo Library on that device prior to July 26.

macos-mojave-photos-my-photo-stream.jpg

Images in My Photo Stream can be saved to the Photos app on the iPhone by opening up Photos, going to the My Photo Stream album, selecting individual photos, and using the Share button to save them to the Library. The process is the same on the Mac, but you will need to drag images from My Photo Stream to the Library.

Apple suggests that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users turn on iCloud Photos to view their photos and videos across their devices. iCloud Photos is available on iPhones and iPads running iOS 8.3 or later and Macs running OS X Yosemite or later.

Article Link: Apple's 'My Photo Stream' Service Shutting Down in July 2023
Boo apple this is sad it was a convenient feature in such short notice too. iCloud photos can be confusing and causes many other problems. Just goes to show the Apple is tightening its budgets as they do this they will lose people because that's what keeps people in their ecosystem changing things like this people who have no reason to stay with Apple products. Everything's about the subscription eventually nobody want to pay for a subscription to anymore. I'm pretty soon social media apps will be charging you a fortune to cares when they're not free just get rid of them.
 
I scanned below, but I didn't see this mentioned in this thread: you can have 4 TB right now if you're willing to pay enough for it, by combining a 2 TB Apple One subscription with a 2 TB iCloud+ subscription.
Regrettably this option requires iCloud+ Premier, which is only available in countries where Apple Fitness+ is available.
 
If that were the case, you would get an additional 5 GB for each device.
Plus people with no Apple devices can have 5GB of iCloud storage just by creating an Apple account.

Google supports those people with advertising when using those services. Apple just has to pay out of pocket for those people.
 
If that were the case, you would get an additional 5 GB for each device.
you can create a new Apple ID for each device.

Plus people with no Apple devices can have 5GB of iCloud storage just by creating an Apple account.
and there are people with multiple Apple IDs.
and there are devices with multiple Apple IDs (Mac or via signing in/out on iOS/iPadOS).
and those without a single apple device have very little reason to use iCloud's 5GB.
evens out.
 
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Apple's "My Photo Stream" service is set to shut down on July 26, 2023, which means customers who are still using that feature will need to transition to using iCloud Photos prior to that date.

icloud-photos.jpg

My Photo Stream is a free service that uploads the last 30 days of images (up to 1,000) to iCloud, making them accessible on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. It predates iCloud Photos and has largely been replaced by the iCloud Photos service at this point.

Going forward, Apple plans to have all customers use iCloud Photos instead of My Photo Stream. New photo uploads to My Photo Stream will stop on June 26, 2023, and images will remain in iCloud as usual for 30 days until the shutdown point.

Because all of the images in My Photo Stream are stored in their original format on at least one Apple device, there isn't a danger of photos being lost as part of the shutdown process. Apple recommends that users who want to have their images on a particular device save them to the Photo Library on that device prior to July 26.

macos-mojave-photos-my-photo-stream.jpg

Images in My Photo Stream can be saved to the Photos app on the iPhone by opening up Photos, going to the My Photo Stream album, selecting individual photos, and using the Share button to save them to the Library. The process is the same on the Mac, but you will need to drag images from My Photo Stream to the Library.

Apple suggests that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users turn on iCloud Photos to view their photos and videos across their devices. iCloud Photos is available on iPhones and iPads running iOS 8.3 or later and Macs running OS X Yosemite or later.

Article Link: Apple's 'My Photo Stream' Service Shutting Down in July 2023
Didn’t even know it was a thing. Glad to have migrated from Flickr to iCloud though.
 
Plus people with no Apple devices can have 5GB of iCloud storage just by creating an Apple account.

Google supports those people with advertising when using those services. Apple just has to pay out of pocket for those people.
My issue with people wanting something for free is how is it free? Nothing Google is doing for you is free. They had Google photos as “free“ for a while, just to train their AI. Now it’s not “free“ because they don’t need your data as much. Anything online is either going to be paid, supported by advertisements or supported by gathering your data. If I had the choice of those three options when it comes to my iCloud account, I would pick the one that’s paid. Perhaps someone else might choose to trade their data or watch ads for free storage but I don’t see Apple doing that
 
I have no idea about android. Haven’t had one since 2013, and have zero desire to go back.
I can see giving a third-party app like dropbox access to system level settings would be a privacy and security nightmare. The back up on iCloud when it comes to that is pretty much the current state of your phone so it would be like them having access to everything on your phone or at least I would think so.

My only android phone is for work, so I don’t bother with the settings to see how I can back it up. I figure if there’s anything needing to be backed up, the system administrator will take care of it. I don’t even know if you can back up the complete state of an android phone and restore it like the iPhone does.
 
Now people will have to enable iCloud photo and quickly fill up their free 5GB and pay for more to get a similar experience to the older free feature. How nice
Until I subscribed to iCloud+, I didn’t let photos sync to the cloud. I imported photos to my photo library on the Mac then deleted them from the phone.

5GB is ok if you don’t sync photos. Contacts, calendar and other things don’t take up much room
 
I really hope this is a sign more iCloud storage is coming soon. In 2023, 2TB is not enough.
I‘m pretty sure they will announce some changes soon, i.e. slight increase in the free tier, and higher capacity tiers.

My Photo Stream always had some issues with sync (either being slow as hell or not working at all). One had to close the Photos app on one device, re-open on the receiving device, or log out/in of iCloud etc. etc.
On top of that mirroring to other devices automatically converted the images to lower quality.

It would be easy as pie for Apple to offer a feature that automatically mirrors images (even videos) taken on a device on a particular Apple ID to other compatible devices on that same Apple ID on the same WiFi network if so desired by the user (essentially an automatic air-drop). But it looks like Apple wants you purchase (more) iCloud space.
 
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Photo Stream doesn't count against iCloud storage. It's obvious why apple is doing this. That being said, very few people probably use it anymore.
That’s a contradiction right there. If they shutter this to drive up iCloud subscriptions it won’t have any effect on their bottom line as few people are using it.

They are shutting this down because it is confusing and redundant. That’s all.
 
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I still use photostream for one main reason. I also have many photos on my PC taken with my DSLR which I then sync to my iPhone/iPad using iTunes. As I understand this isn’t possible with iCloud Photos enabled. When turning on iCloud Photos I get the message “Photos synced from finder will be removed”. Does anyone have any suggestions how I can still do this?
 
My photo album runs to over 55,000 images and I dont want or for that matter need them all in the cloud. I use photo stream to see the most recents on my devices and like many others often use this as a way to show them when taking about things ive taken photos of recently.
I would be OK with icloud photos if and only if I could choose what gets uploaded - ie the last x-months, or this smart album, etc
iCloud photos is basically a sledge hammer - its all or nothing
This and I dont want to have yet another monthly subscription, unlike many I can live on the "free" 5GB because of the way I use and manage my devices. Its very lazy to just buy more space so you can have everything everywhere, why do I need/want images that I took 10+ years ago on every device?
 
So now if I have a 200 GB Photos library I am forced to buy the extra 200 GB iCloud storage because it insists on storing every single photo... My Photo Stream was awesome in that it only stored the latest photos which would get transferred over, and then it would no longer have to store them since they were now saved on every device, no need to store them online forever.

Or alternatively if I don't use iCloud Photos then the only way to transfer photos over is to do it one by one with AirDrop.

iCloud is good and I am paying for the 200GB service but it's silly to waste it on Photos that are stored on my computer anyway, there is no need for them to ever be in the cloud, except for the 1 minute during which they get sent from the phone to the computer.
 
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I still use photostream for one main reason. I also have many photos on my PC taken with my DSLR which I then sync to my iPhone/iPad using iTunes. As I understand this isn’t possible with iCloud Photos enabled. When turning on iCloud Photos I get the message “Photos synced from finder will be removed”. Does anyone have any suggestions how I can still do this?
You would have to add the DSLR photos to your iCloud Photo Library I believe.
 
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