This is literally what iCloud Photo Library is. I don’t know why Apple should be paying for lots of cloud storage for people. There are real costs to running data centres, and why should other parts of the operation be subsidising some potentially high users?
Which would lead to a more confused product offering and a sort of second-class service that never gets the development attention it needs. I would much rather Apple concentrate its engineering resources on improving iCloud Photo Library which already seems to be pretty solid.
Clearly some people value aspects of the old Photo Stream, but honestly I think this is a minuscule minority – I can’t see that there’s any meaningful demand for it anymore. Even if Apple didn’t care about iCloud+ subscriptions, I can’t see the justification for developing another photo syncing service.
I’m an old-time, knowledgable, user of Apple (hardware and service) products … eWorld, mobile.me, mac.com, iCloud. I suspect I’m also not “typical” … with a few decades worth of images in Photos. I have consistently steered clear of putting any of my photos on those Apple services. I sync everything else that I can via iCloud to another Mac, my iPhone, iPad, etc, so I’m a big fan of iCloud, just not for photos.
That being said, Apple’s various “photos in the cloud” offerings have presented a real challenge. At one point they offered three different photo services, all at the same time if my memory serves me, differing in allowed quantity or lifetime of storage, changing image format and/or resolution on up/down loading, and other features so I dodged the whole service.
I am sympathetic with all the comments in this thread; I feel Apple has fallen down badly in its support of photographers (don’t get me started on the Photos app!). Final Cut wins Oscars, so we know Apple can offer superlative products … every iPhone announcement headlines the amazing camera improvements and I know people who have upgraded their phones only to get a better camera.
Apple could dominate this market for beginners to professionals … they have, arguably, the best pocket camera, but inadequate software and confusing cloud support. It’s a shame.
Nah, it’s not. Go back and read what I actually proposed. What I’m talking about is syncing from one iDevice to another (or to a Mac). No cloud storage. Just brokering a transfer.
If that’s what you’re looking for, you should check out Mylio which has an option to do exactly that. It’s worked very well in my testing with small numbers of photos.
An interesting side note. Today I received an email with the sender Cloud and the subject something like “All your photos and videos will be removed”. Nothing in the body but obvious spam in the address/return data. Always looking for new phish bait.
Gavin, the first Apple “service” I used was “AL-PE” or “AppleLink - Personal Edition” on my Apple IIc and a high speed modem of a blazing 300 baud! Of course Apple bailed on it as they did eWorld, Mac.com, and MobileMe; I’m surprised they have bailed on iCloud yet.
My experience here is that I had to move to My Photo Stream this year due to the large size of iPhone 14 photos. We have a modest set of 3 users in the family and each had bumped up to about 50 GB of data in the 200 GB family plan. But when I went with the iPhone 14 last year I put us over the limit during our January vacation and had to exit iCloud Photos. So with this service disappearing, I need to decide on upgrading to the 2 TB plan at an extra $7.00 monthly. Apple knows their numbers well and I suspect that they expect many storage upgrades with the new high pixel count phones. I looked at the Apple One bundles and the pricing makes the low quality services like Fitness and Arcade free but storage, Music and TV remain less expensive a la carte. I’m the main photographer in our group and I use Adobe Lightroom - but the automatic backup of the iPhone is indispensable, especially while ‘on the road’. And for the less dedicated photographers, the Photos system is solid.
I will eventually upgrade my iCloud+ from 200 GB to 2 TB. $7 extra per month is less than my annual spending on external drives.
I’m not sure when I will make the upgrade purchase. I will still need external drives.
Maybe I won’t be as obsessive about making copies. Rather than haul around portable drives, I can let iCloud sync via WiFi from a hotel room.
