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Live photos are a selling factor.

I see it as half gimmick/half not, depending on what Apple does in the future.

If they change things on the software side where it allows 30fps, I think it will take off. People will love it. There will be a few millions cats doing funny things on a few million iPhones screens. Especially if we can swap those suckers around.

It'd also be great if they allowed you to use your own time lapse photos. A few seconds of a cat swiping a glass off of a counter or clouds moving over an awesome mountain view wouldn't have that much affect on battery life.

And I'm really really REALLY tired of the complaints about the size of the live photos. I have 2100 photos on my phone right now and it hardly makes a dent in my total storage. I'm sure I won't have 2100 live photos so I don't see their size having that much impact.
 
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My girlfriend has been a big fan of them so far, I am not really fussed I think a couple of nice ones and then I will be bored of it
 
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How can live photos can be played in iMessage ob OS X without having a Macbook with a force touchpad trackpad?
 
Saved one to my favorites. I have favorites synced on my Apple Watch. Sure enough when I flick my wrist the pic plays pretty cool I think.
 
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I really like live photos. Sure, there are some things that could be better, such as the frame rate. But overall, they are tools to bring back memories, which is much of the point of photos in the first place, which makes them even better. Facebook has announced that they will be supporting them in the future, so I take that as meaning Instagram will too. Once that happens, I think we will see widespread adoption.
 
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Is there any indication that a photo is actually a live photo? When I look through my photo gallery, I just am having to hold down to see if it is live. Is that right?
 
mattopotamus said:
Is there any indication that a photo is actually a live photo? When I look through my photo gallery, I just am having to hold down to see if it is live. Is that right?
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There's the live photo symbol in messages, and if you're swiping between photos in the Photos app, there is some brief motion. But I don't see a way in the gallery of photos to determine which photos are "live" vs regular. There should be an icon on each image similar to how the panorama icon denotes an image is panoramic.
 
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urkel said:
If 0% of viewers can see a live photo you are trying to share on the web then I think it's clear why people think this feature is a gimmick.


Don't take my snarky comment wrong. As a photographer then I was actually very very excited for this feature. But after using it for but then several things became very clear as to why this CURRENT version is a gimmick:

1) Sharing. The limitations in showing a photo are a big deal. You wanted to sell the forum as to why the gimmick isn't a gimmick but you can't show us the Live Photo that is supposedly so amazing.

2) Low quality of non-Keyframes. The comoression of the surrounding frames are not clear or high quality. So you have a good shot surrounded by moving blocks

3) Blur when launching animation. These aren't the Harry Potter photos people expected because that blur when you activate a shot is just jarring. Apple needs to find a way to loop the file from the main shot to make it more fluid.

4) Tripod Required. Okay, not "required" but the slightest movement at such a low frame rate makes it very unpleasant to view.

And now the big one that will upset people...

5) Apple did Live Photos wrong
While the idea of grabbing surrounding frames around a picture makes sense, it seems like the right way to do this is to turn a high quality 4K video burst into a photo. This may create a very small workflow (edit, trim, save) but the results would be more consistent frames and far more visual appeal.

Okay well that's my view. I'll keep using it because It's a good 1.0 start but it won't graduate from "gimmick" for a generation or two and I definitely wouldn't say this particular version of Live Photos is a reason for someone to buy a 6S.
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Other than sharing, which I think will be resolved, I agree with all of your complaints. Live Photos looked magical at the keynote. In person they are decidedly disappointing.

shahin90 said:
You are looking at this from a professional photographer perspective. I am not expecting these photos to create a video. They create a gif like image for me with sound and the point is the memories they bring which looks amazing to me tbh.
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One doesn't have to be a professional photographer to realize that the implementation of Live Photos leaves a lot to be desired. I'd actually rather have gifs as they look more "natural" than Live Photos do. There's just something off with the way the phone is rendering the images to my eyes and brain.

Someone asked if we could make vines out of Live Photos. If you airdrop from your phone to your Mac, you'll see that the live photo is comprised of a jpg and a mov file. AirDrop the mov file to your Mac, then back to your phone and it will show up as a separate video. Upload that video to vine or Instagram.
 
And as far as selling points go, I think 3D Touch is huge, while Live Photos are an afterthought.
 
Supermallet said:
One doesn't have to be a professional photographer to realize that the implementation of Live Photos leaves a lot to be desired. I'd actually rather have gifs as they look more "natural" than Live Photos do. There's just something off with the way the phone is rendering the images to my eyes and brain.
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Exactly. The entire playback method just seems flawed and unnatural

Again, I'm a fan of the concept. Grabbing the moments that surround your photo is interesting. But as much as the user (pro, amateur or granny) has to rethink how to take a photo, I feel Apple has to rethink how they have created an awkward user experience.


1) To activate the movement you need your finger on the screen (which often is blocking the view.) Try viewing the photo on the Mac Photos app and you'll see a start click makes more sense than a 3D Touch. This isn't magic, it's a low quality video file.

2) The start point of the video doesn't seem consistent. So you go from a clear shot to a blur to somewhere before the clear shot and ending after the clear shot. Its an awful lot of jumps for a 2second video

3) 2 Second Video is too short. And this is where your GIF point is validated. GIFs are also short movement clips but because they loop then you see the initial moment you missed. On a Live Photo it stops at the end so you barely see any movement.

Again. I like the idea behind this. But I do feel that Live Photo should have its own tab where it would switch to 4K for video and allow you to choose the very clear Keyframe and trim the fat. It sounds like a lot of work but it's probably less of a chore than going through every live photo and Unselecting the Live Option on the duds.


Supermallet said:
Someone asked if we could make vines out of Live Photos. If you airdrop from your phone to your Mac, you'll see that the live photo is comprised of a jpg and a mov file. AirDrop the mov file to your Mac, then back to your phone and it will show up as a separate video. Upload that video to vine or Instagram.
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Also you can open Image Capture on the Mac and just grab the mov file.
 
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perkedel said:
people said the same thing about touchID two years ago.
"Finger print? Gimmick!"
"Why would I want touch ID? I can just tap my code"
"TouchId ain't ****!"
bla bla blah.. etc

then we got Apple Pay.
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But often times isn't that exactly what a gimmick is? Something that doesn't serve a purpose... Yet.

iPod Video. MacBook Air. Siri. TouchID. Apple Watch. Live Photos. Force Touch.

Just because they (may) eventually evolve to be a key feature doesn't mean they didn't start off as Gimmick 1.0
 
perkedel said:
people said the same thing about touchID two years ago.
"Finger print? Gimmick!"
"Why would I want touch ID? I can just tap my code"
"TouchId ain't ****!"
bla bla blah.. etc

then we got Apple Pay.
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TouchID was never a gimmick. It was incredibly convenient over typing in a code every time you wanted to unlock your phone and likely led to more people making pass codes for their phones, which is necessary for the activation lock. Apple Pay was a great further use for it.

I'm not sure what further use Live Photos will have, and if Apple can find some way to ale them feel more useful and necessary, great. But right now they do feel like a gimmick, and I've rarely felt that way about new iPhone features. At least it's easy to turn on and off.
 
The fact that people even talk about turning it off shows me a lot of people don't really "get" it. The whole point is you don't have to plan for it or do anything special. You just take pictures the way you always have, and as a bonus you have all these quick little videos you can check out later on - or just as easily ignore them.

I can see turning them off if your device is severely space-constrained or if you're worried about the privacy implications of catching stuff you didn't intend on, but turning them off just because you don't see an immediate use for them ensures you'll never find a use for them.
 
TurboPGT! said:
People with the feature bitching about it and turning it off, people without the feature bitching they know better than Apple and it should be on their device too.
Typical Macrumors nonsense.
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We upgraded every phone in the house, but I would still love to hear the technical reasoning about why previous devices are incapable of producing Live Photos.

we will probably never get s technical reason, much like why we will never know for sure why Apple gave us another year with 1gb of ram on the 6 and 6 plus, and various other decisions that don't seem to make sense to consumers.
 
lordofthereef said:
We upgraded every phone in the house, but I would still love to hear the technical reasoning about why previous devices are incapable of producing Live Photos.

we will probably never get s technical reason, much like why we will never know for sure why Apple gave us another year with 1gb of ram on the 6 and 6 plus, and various other decisions that don't seem to make sense to consumers.
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There's a very good reason.
Perhaps it's the new camera itself, perhaps A9 makes it possible, perhaps additional RAM helps with the live capture, perhaps another tent pole feature was needed for the marquee. Any and all of those are legitimate reasons, none of which you "need" as a consumer.
 
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