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Photos is not too bad, especially on a SSD

It's been through some shaking versions, but seems ok now.

Better than iPhoto. Obviously has some things missing, but could never use iPhoto much anyway - I used Aperture.

One thing that I'm not liking in the latest Photos app is that it seems to lose track of comments and titles for photos shared via Photos on an iOS device.

I've not trusted Photos to do "photos in the cloud" yet as it's still in beta, so maybe that will fix it.
 
Does Photos have the ability to selectively sync with iCloud? My photo library is WAY bigger than the 20GB that I pay for (and I don't really care to pay for more space).

No. It is all-or-nothing. Frankly, once you get everything synced it works really, really well. It's great to be done with the insanity of Photostream.

I have a 200GB photo library. One problem I have noticed is that many apps did not recognize the full extent of your photo libraries.

Take Instagram for example. I have 25k photos in library "All Photos". Instagram only shows about 1900. Similar with all albums - Instagram only presents about 10% of the photos in any album. I've noticed other oddities with third party apps.

But again, the iCloud syncing has been awesome.
 
Not sure I want to trust hundreds of GB of photos to iCloud.

OK then, don't.

In all seriousness though, you shouldn't trust anything to one single source, especially when you don't have full control over that source.

I use iCloud Photo Library as an extra feature to keep all my Macs/iPhone in sync, and also as an extra backup.

Doesn't replace anything though - still do TM backups to an external HD.
 
About time! I can't wait to try the new Photos app! :) This is going to be the main reason for me to update. I take a lot of photos and videos with my iPhone 6 and for everything to be in sync is very convenient and important.
 
Same! it's a MESS. I have tried it but I have no idea what's actually in the cloud and what's stored local then I delete sth from my Photostream but for some reason those pics stay in the all photos tab. there's no consistency at all and I feel like I have no control over what's "mine.

I haven't messed with the beta but this is my concern since that's what they've done on the iPhone side. They want it to be seemless for the users but you can't tell what's in the cloud and what's local and if you want to delete from one but not the other there doesn't seem to be a way to do it.
 
Nice! I'm looking forward to having this in OS X. I haven't had a negative experience with it in iOS.
 
I just hope the release will be more stable then the beta, have had so many random shutdowns and apps refusing to launch during the last beta version

I also had a few problems with beta, but they were solved by the MacRumors help in clearing the PRAM, and restarting. It has made a big difference.
Best of luck
Stuart
 
Not sure I want to trust hundreds of GB of photos to iCloud.

DO NOT trust Apple with your photos... I love Apple, but they cannot do web services. I've been around since .mac and I long ago decided they make great computers, but keep my data with Dropbox as well as my own backups. I'll never again trust Apple after MobileMe nearly killed me.

I thought I would try again with iCloud Drive on my Mac, but they can't even get little things right, like letting me know with some sync badges what's going on with my files. So I pay Dropbox $99/year that I would gladly pay Apple because I know Dropbox is rock solid and I don't lose a second of sleep at night worrying about my files.

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I'm staying on iPhoto FOREVER!!! :D

Why, iPhoto is cr@p? I moved to Aperture a long time ago. I'm going to keep Aperture and give Photos a shot. I was surprised to see most of what I use Aperture for in the pix I saw of Photos, so I will give it a fair shot today.

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I'm eagerly waiting to upload 2TB, over 350 thousand photos. Can I pay with kidneys? :p I think I'm going to setup two libraries.

Sounds like you need a real storage solution... hope you have local backups when Apple's services come crashing down.
 
So what I'm not understanding about the new photos app is as follows:
Can I still manage my photos with a local copy, similar to the local iPhoto library file on my pc?
Or does this automatically force me to upload the photos to iCloud and work from the iCloud?

Do the photos take up space in my iCloud account so that I now have to pay for storage from apple?
 
As I see it with the beta in Finder, it IS copied and it takes up extra space.

Can you explain then why in beta I have two photo libraries both 20 something GB and a 'pictures folder' that is 40 something GB?

It looks like that, but it doesn't actually take up the extra space it claims to. I converted a 1.4TB Aperture library on a 2TB external SSD without any problems. Yes, the finder reported that both libraries where 1.4TB but my drive didn't fill and it didn't take any extra space.
 
My 2014 MBPr has no wifi issues on my home Airport but at every Starbucks I've gone to I can only stay online for about 10 minutes at most.

The dev previews have done nothing to resolve this issue, so I don't have much hope that this version will either.

It's really frustrating. There is so much that Apple does will, but I think in 2015 that Wifi is a sine-qua-non of a notebook computer.

Anyway, I'm interested to hear from others with regard to whether or not this update provides relief to anyone else who is having the same problems.

:(
 
As a beta tester IMHO Photos is OK as a replacement for iPhoto for casual snapshots for the folks who live on social media. As a replacement for Aperture, not remotely close. All Aperture users need to be planning their migration to Lightroom, Capture One Pro, or other DAM and editing apps.
 
Updates are (almost) always welcome.

Must really get my head around the new Photos app...

Well, for me there's no additional learning/unlearning curve, because although iPhoto has always been there, I've never really used it.

It will just be like learning a new app.
 
How is the new 'photos' app ? Are we looking at the typical 'apple replacement' for an existing app - which comes with less features and severely cripples productivity until 16 updates down the line (after an outcry from masses of consumers, complaining about lost functionality) - or is it at least as functional as iPhoto (not even going to compare it to poor old Aperture which has likewise been put out to pasture).

It's a nice improvement over iPhoto but not even a shadow of Aperture. Worse yet, Apple has provided zero guidance on whether they intend to ever augment Photo's capabilities to be more in line with Aperture's.

This is far worse than what they did, for example, with Final Cur Pro X. With that product, they basically screwed up the messaging and the release, but at least they later promised to bring it up to the capabilities of its predecessor and within a year or so they did. Today, all but the most stubborn old Final Cut users concede that the new version is good.

There is no reason to expect Photos will ever develop Aperture's advanced editing and organizing features, and Apple doesn't see fit to comment on this one way or another.
 
Personally I do not like the new Photos app at all. I've been using it for some weeks now and it just feels like it is made for grandparents and kids to me. It's a very rudimentary app.
 
Here are my very quick thoughts on Photos. You CANNOT selectively sync which photos go into iCloud Photo Library. All or nothing. I chose to sync it all and optimized Mac storage. It imported my 22 gig library from iPhoto with no issues and put them in an album called Events from my Mac. I had to manually pull them out of there to be in the main album view. I then erased the album events from my Mac.

iPhoto was left alone and I manually removed it and the iPhoto database. One weird thing though. Each time I update iOS 8.3 betas, it re-arranges Photos on my phone and puts an album called Events from my Mac (which doesn't exist anymore) and drops recently deleted all the way to the bottom of my other albums I created when I dragged them out of the Events album on my Mac. I have to go into iTunes and uncheck photos and then check it again to get it right.

Overall, Photos works fine for me. It's young and is missing features iPhoto had (like choosing what goes into iCloud library), but it works for me.
 
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