Best Configuration Advice

[HansDolo]

Hello all,

I am trying to figure out what the best configuration is going to be for my girlfriend. I am her IT department, so I have to figure out how all this works for her. Unfortunately, I am also Win/Android, which is why I have stumbled into the lion's den to ask for advice.

She currently has an iPad Air 2 and just pre-ordered a 6s. Currently, she is using a 5, which has 100MB left on it. She used to have a ~2006 MacBook, but would like to go iPad/iPhone only with no laptop. I have a 4TB NAS and will be purchasing a new computer in the near future (Win10, sorry).

Her main concern (and mine) is photos. Her iPhone is her primary camera, and we'd like the photos to show up everywhere. My concern right now is that I don't understand how the iCloud handles deleting photos or saving them. How can I set this up so that:

1) Photos automagically appear on her iPad/iPhone (without using Google Photos... which we use.
2) Ensure that the photos are safely backed up somewhere. I honestly don't know where/how to back these photos up because there is no laptop involved. Is there a way to do this without a full OS X machine being involved?

Any assistance is appreciated.

 

[HansDolo]

Ah, c'mon guys. No one wants to help?

 

[Jeff_42]

I'm no expert but I believe this is all you have to do: On both her iPhone and iPad go into settings, and then the iCloud menu. Go into the "Photos" menu and make sure that "iCloud Photo Library" is enabled (green). I'd I'd recommend checking "Upload to photostream" to make syncing stuff as seamless as possible. If she is having space issues I would hope the new iPad has significantly more storage than the phone. If you back out of the Photos menu to the iCloud menu again, it will show you how much space is left in iCloud, and you can click that for details and the option to get more storage space. I have to admit, I've been tempted as the basic plan is currently extremely cheap at $1/month for 50GB. And unless she got at least a 64 GB iPad, I'd recommend getting that if her storage is used up mostly by photos (as opposed to apps) since she would have no computer to back up to.

 

[mrex]

Have you checked is there a cloud app for your NAS and using it as a primary storage for photos? I have WD NAS and they have apps for all os's im using. I can easily access to my NAS from everywhere and the NAS drive is mapped in win/osx laptops and using the cloud app in my android/ios devices. Unfortunately it may not be so automatic and she may need to send new photos to the NAS drive from the app.

Unfortunately(?) I have never got icloud app (photostream) working on my windows laptop - it syncs - now it doesnt - well it does it for some photos, but not for all - now it doesnt do anything - now they disappeared... Maybe the new icloud drive may be differend thing, dont know...