You Can Now Sync Apple Photos With Xiaomi Cloud

[Marbles1]

They are more interested in Money, Security and privacy are more about marketing than actual features.

100%.

Money is the only driver. Perhaps long term money as well as short and medium term money. Things like equality, human rights, etc. must at most be cost neutral, or at least lead to things like expansion of market share, positive brand messaging and so on. But in the end it's purely about money.

And even things like privacy didn't used to be in Apple's DNA. They just saw it was something that other companies e.g. google weren't going for, and started to push it in earnest after about 2015. Anything before then was minor e.g. cookie blocking options , things that every company were doing.

 

[Soonerpet]

I just want Apple to let me pick and choose which albums or date range I can sync to the cloud. I don't need 20 years of photos in the cloud, I'd like to keep all the old stuff on my Mac, but I would like the past few months synced across my devices.

 

[minik]

That's neat, another alternative for users to choose from.

 

[russell_314]

Upload my photos to a Chinese company? Noooo thank you.

How come this update got approved?

I know it’s like the whole world is the USA. There’s no people outside of the USA so if it’s not good for the USA then why do we have it. Why would Apple care about the 3 billion people in China or maybe Chinese people in America that want to use an app that familiar to them? That’s crazy right 🤦‍♂️😂

This is sarcasm for the people that can’t see the obvious

 

[now i see it]

Theres millions of iPhone users in China. Thats who this service is for

 

[DogHouseDub]

This is great. If I somehow lose my photos, I can email Xi and ask for his copy.

 

[JCCA]

This is not for any of you. Do you live in China? No, then it’s not for you. This is simply an option. Most users outside of China do not upload their stuff to Xiaomi cloud, so no use for 90% of you.

Always making crappy “hurr durr who would want to give CCP their data”. Always the same song and dance.

 

[svish]

Good to know about this. But I would definitely not use this. Don't have any need to upload to Xiaomi cloud service. Not sure how many will be using this.

 

[a.coward]

I'm not too sure why there is so much discussion on these political and economic conspiracy theories. Am I missing something? Apps already have the ability access to the IOS photo album (provided you give them permission to do so). All Xiaomi is doing is using these APIs and uploading your photos to their cloud. No special permission, back doors or anything else -- they are doing exactly what Google, Amazon, and countless other cloud providers currently do.

 

[ignatius345]

Why the hell would anyone want to do this? Just use iCloud. 🤣

I think people are missing the point here. Whether you want to sync with Xiaomi or not (and it's a hard pass for me too), it's always better to have competition.

If iCloud is your only option to natively sync your camera roll, Apple can charge you whatever they feel like charging. If you have the freedom to plug into another cloud provider -- be it Google, Dropbox, OneDrive or any of a host of others -- then you get to choose which one works best for you.

The best case scenario for all this is that you can plug in some other cloud provider into everywhere iCloud can work: Notes, Photos, Files, device backup, etc etc. I myself am quite happy with iCloud as well, but it's never good to be locked in.

 

[nathansz]

Why can't Apple provide a way to have your home computer become your own personal cloud? If they truly care about security and privacy, they would have made it this a possibility.

Because they can’t sell you a subscription to your own server

It’s really not that difficult to set it up your self, no need for apple to provide it for you

 

[nathansz]

Upload my photos to a Chinese company? Noooo thank you.

No worse than google

 

[dumastudetto]

Upload my photos to a Chinese company? Noooo thank you.

Better to upload cloud data to a US company where your data is easily accessible via a trivial court order. Which is the reason why the US government insisted tiktok store US data within jurisdiction of US courts. If your data is stored in China, for example, it's a lot more difficult for the US government to rummage through your stuff.

 

[ZZ9pluralZalpha]

Why can't Apple provide a way to have your home computer become your own personal cloud? If they truly care about security and privacy, they would have made it this a possibility.

If you recall, this was their old “digital hub” approach before “the cloud” became popular. To replicate iCloud’s features, it adds quite a few fragile links to the sync chain: your home computer must remain always on and plugged in, your network connection needs to be very stable and fast for both download and upload, providing sufficient storage and RAID or offline backups would become your responsibility, wake-on-network and DNS reporting need to be extremely reliable, and every user of the feature would need to affirm that they won’t go crying to social media if they fail at being a homelab admin. I’d guess over 99% of customers would simply opt to pay for the faster, more reliable datacenter service.

 

[racerhomie]

Great to see some competition.

Security: Any cloud service offered in China must have its data stored locally. Apple’s iCloud service in China is supplied through a local operator (not Apple). So, Xiaomi is no different.

Use case: Well, given the popularity of Xiaomi within China, it could potentially make it easier to get users to switch. Xiaomi has a large ecosystem, a lot of which can be managed through an iOS APP, but some key features just work better on a Xiaomi phone.

Price: At the moment the monthly cost for both Apple iCloud and Xiaomi Cloud is the same for a 2TB package, but Xiaomi does have a yearly package for just under $70 for the 2TB plan.

Apple has Advanced Data Protection (End to End Encryption) for iCloud data in China

 

[racerhomie]

Better to upload cloud data to a US company where your data is easily accessible via a trivial court order. Which is the reason why the US government insisted tiktok store US data within jurisdiction of US courts. If your data is stored in China, for example, it's a lot more difficult for the US government to rummage through your stuff.

You do realize Advanced Data Protection exists, right?(End to End Encryption)

 

[Jaro65]

Yes, but do you want to...?

 

[SBlue1]

What?! NO!! I wanted to sue Apple for forcing me to pay for iCloud!

 

[SBlue1]

Why can't Apple provide a way to have your home computer become your own personal cloud? If they truly care about security and privacy, they would have made it this a possibility.

Totally agree! Or why can't I just hook up my spare SSD to my Apple TV or my Mac and make it my personal home cloud? Save all my music, data, photos to the SSD instead of iCloud.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Why the hell would anyone want to do this? Just use iCloud. 🤣

Yeah, it' plain and simple. And it works good.
Everything else is just trying to reinvent the wheel.

 

[ignatius345]

100% this. iCloud uploads are just a way of syncing photos between devices and not a very safe backup option. Delete an image from one of your devices and its gone from everything. I wish more people knew this.

Definitely. If you're syncing your photos to a Mac, you have to make sure the full set of iCloud Photos is being backed up.

 

[Ctrlos]

Definitely. If you're syncing your photos to a Mac, you have to make sure the full set of iCloud Photos is being backed up.

A cross between Time Capsule and Homepid would go a long way.

 

[dcny]

Xiaomi is a joke.

 

[GrassShark]

If they're willing to do this then let me pick my own cloud solution to sync to as well. I know they won't because that might accidentally make them a few dollars less in profit, but we can dream.

 

[jayducharme]

For years I've been asking Apple to give us more choice with which media is backed up to iCloud Photos. Currently, it's all or nothing. I have over 3 tb of media in my Photos library and most of that is from videos. If Apple would just let me deselect the videos, I'd be fine with iCloud's Photo syncing. But I really wish they'd just bring back Photo Stream.