
Apple – OS X – Photos - liyanage
http://www.apple.com/osx/photos/
======
cannikin
I've been running the beta for a month or so and I can't imagine going back.
FINALLY all of my photos are available everywhere and safely stored without me
doing any extra work. Photo Stream was a nice first step, but it was a rolling
1000 latest photos—everything else just disappeared if you didn't open iPhoto
occasionally and let it download the latest stuff from your stream.

Now everything is present on all devices and they don't even take up a ton of
storage: by default only the thumbnails are saved locally and then when you
expand a photo you'll see a little cloud icon in the corner until it has a
chance to download the full res version from iCloud.

The only downside I've noticed is that now that I have 25,000 photos on my
iPhone, apps that want to access the camera roll take a few seconds to open
the photo browser now (most noticeably in Instagram). To me that's a fair
trade off, and, if possible, I'm sure most apps will release updates to make
it faster.

~~~
_ZeD_

        >>> FINALLY all of my photos are available everywhere and safely stored without me doing any extra work
    

duh, dropbox resolved this problem... how much, ten years ago?

~~~
cannikin
Dropbox isn't even close to this experience. Yes the files themselves would be
everywhere, but I don't want to have to go into the Dropbox app to view my
photos (not to mention the Dropbox app being extremely slow in my experience).
With iCloud they're all in your regular Photos app ready to be shared or used
in other apps just like the photos you shot with your phone.

~~~
agildehaus
That's more of a problem with iOS than a problem with Dropbox.

~~~
andkon
"The stock app works the way it should without me having to find another
service" is a good thing, not really a problem.

I'm glad Apple's improving their software offerings, because not everything of
theirs is "works like it should" good.

~~~
TheDong
The stock app working well is a good thing.

Not being able to have another app fix issues in the stock app is a problem.
If dropbox were able to express an intent to be notified of all photos taken,
they could have solved this problem long ago and roughly as well, but they
couldn't and so didn't. The problem is not that Apple solved this problem, but
that no one else could have due to how apple treats all non-apple apps as
second class citizens.

------
binarycrusader
What terrifies me (as a MacBook Pro owner) is the recent realisation (due to
some random corruption of iphoto data, and yes I have a backup device to
restore from) that OS X has a fundamentally unreliable filesystem sitting on
top of ever-expanding storage devices that many of us are depending on to
archive our photos and other data.

I don't understand why Apple keeps pushing the capabilities of the system
further and their hardware but haven't yet addressed the critical data storage
issues that are eating away at the edges.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
> OS X has a fundamentally unreliable filesystem

Unfortunately so is every other filesystem. Which is also why Apple heavily
emphasizes making backups.

~~~
ChrisLTD
A backup doesn't help you if the photo is corrupted, and then that corrupted
photo is propagated to your backups. You need a way to catch file corruption,
like what ZFS and Btrfs have.

~~~
vacri
btrfs still isn't 'production ready', unfortunately.

~~~
samf
ZFS is, and Apple almost had it. Damn.

~~~
coldtea
ZFS is totally broken for regular desktop use. It's use case is a different
thing altogether.

Do people just read the "pros" and not the "cons"?

~~~
laumars
ZFS doesn't have a specific "use case". In fact a large amount of effort went
into ensuring that ZFS was tolerant of consumer hardware, so that makes it as
sensible option for desktop use as ext4 or HFS+ (when looking strictly at "use
cases").

You've also failed to quantify why ZFS is "totally broken for regular desktop
use" (likely because you've never actually used ZFS so can only blow smoke
about it's issues).

People love to over exaggerate the RAM requirements for ZFS because they see
build logs of enterprise-grade storage servers. But you wouldn't expect that
kind of throughput on your desktop systems even with lighter file systems. And
most desktops have their 64bit CPU sat idle for most of the time, so there's
not even an argument for the additional instruction overhead.

Obviously the real crux of argument is "what do you primarily use your desktop
for"? If it's gaming, then there's little point running ZFS since you're going
to be disinterested in the benefits of ZFS (plus likely running Windows
anyway). However if your desktop is a development machine, used for multimedia
authoring or even just an internet terminal (like most PCs are these days),
then ZFS is a viable option.

------
jader201
Does this still come with the required bloated and brittle metadata libraries
and structure that prevents you from setting it up on a shared NAS so that
your other non-Mac machines can access it?

This has always been my complaint with iPhotos, and I'm betting this is no
different.

Ideally, it would manage to keep the metadata abstracted from the structure so
that you could set it up however and wherever you wanted.

But unfortunately for users, their model isn't about building an open and
flexible photo storage solution, but rather a solution that depends on the
iCloud and the need to purchase more storage capacity.

~~~
hyperbovine
Fortunately for users, their model is about building something that works
transparently and seamlessly across all of their products, a feat which Apple
has proven again and again people are willing to pay a little extra for. 99.8%
of users think metadata is the act of meeting a child's father.

~~~
devindotcom
_across all of their products_

By "their" you mean "Apple's," right, not "the user's"? Not being facetious,
it's true but the phrasing is ambiguous.

------
mcbetz
Photos are probably the most valuable digital files quite everyone has. And as
with all things that are precious, there comes (or at least should come)
caution.

There is nothing that I fear more than loosing my photos, my visual biography.

That is why I am super conservative when it comes to software that wants to
handle my photos.

What are the requirements for software that I allow to manage my photos:

\- Very good chance of still being in the market in 5-10 years. This basically
rules out all Google (Picasa), Apple (iPhoto, Aperture, Photos) products.

\- Possibility to backup my photos on various destinations (not only one
commercial cloud)

\- A library format that is readable from external applications (SQL, metadata
files)

\- Good tools to search, compare and sort my library

\- At least support two major platforms natively

Unfortunately, the only software that meets most of these requirements is
Adobe's Lightroom. And this is very sad:

\- It has too many features that I do not need - I am not a professional
photographer

\- It does not care about native UIs and its usability I still find weak

\- It asks for a premium price for professional photographers (both the one-
time fee and the creative cloud version)

How about alternatives?

\- Aperture was a very good alternative, despite being only available for Mac

\- I was disappointed by all open source alternatives; most of which are not
easily available for Mac and Windows (Lightzone, Darkroom, Digikam, Shotwell)

\- Digikam comes closest, but as it's KDE based, installation and native
support on Windows and Mac is still weak

\- Capture One Pro 8 works on Mac and Windows but is even more expensive than
Lightroom and hence not worth it

\- I do not know about any other photo management tool that is stable, multi
platform and meets most of the conservative demands

~~~
chkuendig
I completely agree. Nevertheless I switched to Photos a few days ago for the
following reasons:

\- The integration across devices is perfect (All metadata editing/sorting is
synched on all devices while the Only files only reside on my Mac and on the
cloud)

\- All Photos are still backupped offline with my Mac and from what I see a
simple symlink of the Masters folder is enough to back them up to a third
party backup service. (w/o metadata but for me this is good enough worst-case
protection)

I still miss a few features, but I hope an eventual release of Photos
Framework for OSX will be able to add them through a 3rd Party tool:

\- Metadata export for a 3rd Party Backup

\- Better automation to find duplicates/corrupted images etc. (i have a super
messy library of about 20'000 pictures which i cant clean up manually at this
point)

\- Better metadata editing, especially for geo-tagging (I have a lot of non-
smartphone pictures)

~~~
mcbetz
Thanks for pointing to Photos' Framework. That might really solve some of the
problems that you mentioned.

------
cpr
Dang, I want to love this as a "just works" kind of solution, but as soon as I
turn on Cloud Sharing, I get dinged with the need to pay for an iCloud
capacity upgrade.

(Edit:) 5GB seems like a pretty measly free level.

~~~
caryhartline
It's not like they can just give away unlimited storage.

~~~
brandon272
I think it would add a lot to the Apple experience if they provided unlimited
iCloud storage for your photos. It would be a much more seamless experience
for a product like this.

Google allows me to back up unlimited "standard size" photos for free.

~~~
jug
I also don't really see the problem. Very few will use excessive storage,
which is the insight those free services with sizable storage is based on,
like Flickr with 1 TB free which is essentially "unlimited" when it comes to
photo storage. Key is to restrict it to a certain use scenario / file format,
which will make it even harder to abuse.

------
planetjones
1TB of storage space is $240 a year with iCloud. Amazon Cloud Drive is $12 a
year for unlimited photos or $60 a year for unlimited everything. I'll stick
to Lightroom and Cloud Drive for my photo needs. Until Apple join the league
of Google and Amazon with their cloud storage options, then I'm not
interested, even if their products are pretty good.

~~~
ceejayoz
Even from Amazon, haven't we learned not to ever trust the statement
"unlimited"?

I had an "unlimited" data plan from AT&T. People regularly get their
"unlimited" $1/month shared hosting accounts terminated for going over a few
megs of storage.

~~~
72deluxe
It's almost like you can't trust cloud providers!

I keep the majority of my data at home on a NAS instead of flinging it to the
other side of the world and being disappointed that I have trouble getting it
back.

Given the lowering cost of storage and out-of-the-box ease for shoving NAS
boxes on a network and them popping up in a network browsing situation, I
wonder if more people will return to local storage and processing? Will there
be a cloud burst, like the dot com bubble burst?

~~~
acdha
> It's almost like you can't trust cloud providers!

That's a rather sweeping statement. It's more accurate to say that you can't
trust a service which you don't pay real money for. I would certainly trust a
paid, dedicated cloud provider like e.g. SmugMug far more than a “free”
service from a large company like Google or Amazon.

> Given the lowering cost of storage and out-of-the-box ease for shoving NAS
> boxes on a network and them popping up in a network browsing situation, I
> wonder if more people will return to local storage and processing?

That model has its own weaknesses: a single NAS box requires you to play
sysadmin and is vulnerable to things like theft, accidents (never assume
anything survives kids & pets!), and security problems. If enough people put
everything on single systems, they're going to start looking like great
targets to the kind of people who make ransom-ware – once the attacker blocks
your access to the only copy, you have no choice but to pay up!

An interesting project would be figuring out how to solve those problems –
e.g. a box which did strongly-encrypted off-site backups with guaranteed
minimum retention periods would be interesting both as a hedge against many of
those threats and as a way to get the recurring revenue needed to support a
serious software project with non-trivial security exposure. You could
probably even open-source everything since the vast majority of people are
more interested in paying someone to handle ops than saving a latte per month
in service charges.

~~~
72deluxe
You are right - my comment was too generalised with regard to cloud providers.
If you do not have a SLA with them, then I suppose it's risky trusting your
data to them. With everyone and their dog offering "cloud storage" to shove
your data, I do wonder if more and more data will get shoved up into "The
Cloud" either to be irretrievable (or forgotten about?)

Perhaps multiple NAS boxed distributed around everywhere would help?

------
secstate
Given how little traction Apple has gained with web apps and storage, you'd
think they'd be a little humble and offer a native app that interoperated with
Android devices, and different storage backends (store you're photos on
Amazon, organize them with Photos). Either that or unlimited storage.

I can't remember the last time I considered a distributed storage service from
Apple reliable, secure or flexible.

Additionally, as an Android user with a Lenovo T440s with Linux and a MacBook
Pro, I am increasingly frustrated with how closely integrated all the Apple
toys are these days.

And I know it's kind of always been this way, but it seems they're growing
myopic with regards to other devices people may own. While I'm not in the
majority with Linux on one device I KNOW I'm not in the minority with an
Android device.

~~~
adamlett
Apple's business model is selling devices at a premium. Every choice they make
is guided by that. In order to sell at a premium (as opposed to competing on
price) their products have to be differentiated. This means no generic back-
ends. No Android apps. The unlimited storage I guess they could do, but their
customers self-select to be more willing than the average consumer to pay for
value, so why should they?

------
aselzer
I have a huge (250GB+) iPhoto library, and it is what is holding me back from
installing Linux on a MBP and wiping Mac OS.

Now it would be possible to just copy all photos to my LAN server with a few
terabytes and Gigabit ethernet, but that would make looking through and at the
photos terribly inconvenient.

Even worse, parts of my photos were imported as RAW and iPhoto was doing its
own magic to convert them to JPEG.

iPhoto was not bad a bad program, I actually liked it, but relying on it was a
lesson for me to never again store my photos in a closed-source program.

Currently I'm still looking for alternatives, Lychee
([http://lychee.electerious.com/](http://lychee.electerious.com/)) looks nice
at first sight, but I don't want a PHP server with MySQL managing my photos.

IMO the nicest solution would be a well-defined photo directory format that
gets indexed by a fast server implementing an API that you can use to access
all photos through client programs. It could keep an SQLite database in the
directory to store metadata, but if it is gone, the directories should still
make sense.

~~~
fit2rule
>Now it would be possible to just copy all photos to my LAN server with a few
terabytes and Gigabit ethernet, but that would make looking through and at the
photos terribly inconvenient.

What a pity there isn't some sort of operating system that can be used to
present your media/content NAS to you, from anywhere in the world, with
whatever front-end you desire .. seems like any OS vendor worth their salt
could produce such a thing.

I guess what we need is for things like ipfs.io to take off, and get wrapped
up in some ZeroConf'ism with a pretty GUI. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

~~~
aselzer
I'd just use an SSH tunnel to connect to my server at home. That's fast and
secure (but obviously too complicated for most users).

"Home server compatible" routers would be nice. Devices could request opening
a port, and you verify the action on the router GUI. Then some dynamic DNS
server assigns you a nice name.

~~~
fit2rule
Apple could build all this into an OSX-local service that is just a push-
button away from being easy to use. Plug in an external hard drive, Log in
with a special pre-configured user account, assign the drive to that user, and
leave your computer running - from that point on, you can access everything
that user has ever submitted, with their iDevice, over the 'net, etc.

I think the desire is definitely _not there_ to make things this easy to use -
precisely because of the Cloud-Zeitgeist that we're all involved in ..

~~~
aselzer
Hopefully this trend will pass at some time.

I wouldn't save my photos on a platform that changes every few months (Google
Photos/Plus/Drive), might be gone in two or three years, analyses images,
builds face databases, and keeps your pictures ready for the NSA to access,
for any purpose other than sharing images with other people.

------
jchimney
They finally got this right. Photos, for me, was a major upgrade to iPhoto.
Allowing me to have full resolution copies on numerous machines, and size
optimized copies on mobile, secondary machines with no syncing effort on my
part.

May not be for everyone; but I love it.

------
smackfu
Notice how the Apple screenshots are always full of photos? That only happens
if you take a lot of shots everytime you take photos, like when you are on
vacation. If not, if you only take occasional random shots, your screen looks
like mine, with lonely photos on the left side of the screen, and then acres
of white space to the right of them.

~~~
atarian
It's like they're trying to advertise the app!

~~~
noir_lord
Showing a product in the best possible but still within the bounds of possible
light to make people want it.

The utter bastards!.

------
jonathankoren
What I really need is something that allows both my laptop and my wife's
laptop to view and edit the photos. Not even simultaneously. Just from two
different machines and two different accounts. Right now we store the photos
on a NAS Picasa to view and edit them. (Picasa hates network drives, but
symlink magic fixes that.) I don't really like Picasa (It insists on G+ too
much, and the UI doesn't integrate well with MacOSX, specifically Finder.),
but it works better than iPhoto for large collections.

Unless I'm mistaken, this looks like the standard Apple approach where its
tied to a single iCloud account. Is family photo sharing/editing really that
difficult? We can't be the only ones that want that right?

Also 1 TB isn't enough space. We have 14 years of photos we'd have to upload.
That's a lot, and these price points are just too expensive.

~~~
kamilafsar
I never used it myself, but there is actually a "Family Sharing" feature for
iCloud.

> When Family Sharing is turned on, a shared album is set up automatically in
> the Photos app on all family members’ devices.

[https://www.apple.com/icloud/family-
sharing/](https://www.apple.com/icloud/family-sharing/)

~~~
josephlord
Be aware that you can't family share in-app purchases (even persistant upgrade
type purchases).

------
akoster
The one feature I'm really going to miss is the ability to set the location of
photos manually, as I was able to do in iPhoto. This would make using the
"Places" feature work really well as I could browse photos by geographic
location and insure the photos taken on an iPhone (with GPS data embedded) and
photos taken with my older digital camera (without this embedded GPS data)
would show up at the specified location. Does anyone know any ways to manually
set a photo or album's location in the new Photos app? (Or do I need to revert
to using something like Exiftool
[http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/](http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/)
to set GPS data manually prior to importing pictures into Photos?)

~~~
mattnewton
I think this is what you wanted?
[https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.0/#/phta4e5a733f](https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.0/#/phta4e5a733f)

Edit: actually it doesn't mention editing map data in the list of editable
things. That's good feedback for
[http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html](http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html)

------
martingordon
I've been using the betas and have added most of my photos to iCloud Photo
Library.

My only issue with Photos.app is that there's no way to geotag and add/edit
metadata on either platform. I've resorted to writing an iOS app to give me
that functionality (using the new-in-iOS 8 Photos framework).

~~~
kingnight
I am crossing my fingers that your work on iOS will be very handy for a Mac
Photos extension come WWDC.

Is it on the App Store or open source by chance?

------
fit2rule
I may not be with it, or hip, or up-to-date on the current feelings compelled
by the zeitgeist, but I'm not at _all_ interested in the Cloud features of
this release. At all. In fact, its a reason for me to forget about the product
- because if I know one thing, if an Apple product has cloud support, its
going to be everywhere, and unavoidable. They'll be compelling me to use it at
every step of the way - heck, probably its all enabled by default.

So what I wish I was seeing, instead, was a way for me to leave my computer
online at home, and _still have access to my media library_ , seamlessly, from
anywhere in the world. Why is it easier for Apple to move all these features
into their data center, and not just fix their operating system at the user
level to make it safe, secure - and Apple-easy - to share content directly
from the machine itself?

I've got an rPi at home, doing the job that Apple wishes I would do with its
cloud. My rPi is available and accessible from anywhere on the Internet, with
ease. Its got all my media that I want access to on the road .. and it works
seamlessly with little fuss. If a $35 device can do that - admittedly with a
modicum of tinkering on my (not in-experienced) part - then why can't a $99
'bleeding edge' operating system do it, without requiring that I just give all
my content to a third party?

Because from where I see it, Apple, you're not competing very well with m $35
media-sharing device that just plain works.

~~~
outsidetheparty
"I'm not at all interested in the Cloud features of this release"

"what I wish I was seeing, instead, was a way for me to leave my computer
online at home, and still have access to my media library, seamlessly, from
anywhere in the world"

You're not the target market.

For most users this is a distinction without a difference -- except that with
the cloud they don't have to remember to leave their home computer turned on
and online 24/7, and they don't have to be responsible for their own backups.

It's not (at all) easier for Apple to move these features into their data
center -- it's easier for (the vast majority of) Apple's users.

Users who know how to do what you want to do -- run a home file server --
already know how to do what you want to do.

~~~
fit2rule
>don't have to be responsible

Put another way: "don't have the choice any more".

And its only hard to run a home file server because its hard and nobody has
made it easier. It could be a lot easier than it is, if only the effort were
being made to make their OS more valuable - as it stands, this Cloud business
is just another reason not to need a Mac.

~~~
CHY872
No, not particularly. A lot of the world is on ADSL or worse; I now have
200Mb/s symmetric fiber which is fantastic, but until recently I could only
get 6Mb/s download, 0.5Mb/sec upload.

Half of all British people can get at most 1Mb/s upload.

That's not good enough to give decent performance. In particular, an iPhone
photo is about 2MB, and that's half a minute (or 15 seconds) to download (for
this use case).

It's not fast enough to stream most video, for example.

Making it easier would have massive infrastructure requirements.

------
wmeredith
Oh thank god. iPhoto is a bag of hurt and has been for years. Now if they'll
only kill iTunes.

~~~
stinkytaco
I feel like I'm the only one in the world who doesn't mind iTunes. There are
ways I would change it, but it terms of:

1\. Making my music browsable and searchable

2\. Making my library pretty with a decent album art library (supplemented by
manual art for missing albums)

3\. Making playlist creation and updating easy

4\. Integrating a large amount of media like podcats and audiobooks

5\. Most important: syncing with my devices

It's fine. It's not great, but foobar doesn't really handle sync very well
(iTunes will update playcounts from my device) and it requires additional
pieces to handle podcasts or audiobooks in ways I want.

I've begun to let my phone handle some pieces of this (some podcasts with
PocketCasts and audiobooks are great with Smart Audiobook Player), but iTunes
is still a fiddle free one stop shop.

~~~
jeorgun
As a recent convert from Linux/Amarok, I think iTunes is great. I really don't
understand why it gets so much hate. It works perfectly fine for me, and looks
quite pretty doing it. I don't know any other music player that has anything
like "shuffle by groupings", which is a killer feature if you listen to a lot
of classical music. Literally the only problem I've had is that it sometimes
doesn't find album artwork[1], but it's easy to manually fix that.

What's the big issue?

[1] It's been 100% on non-artwork metadata.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
iTunes killed my music collection. Two weeks wasted after iTunes turned the
rips into a jumble of random files.

Of course I shouldn't have clicked the "Allow iTunes to manage..." button. Was
it obvious what it would do?

No. It wasn't.

When you try to load apps from a device and it already has apps from the same
device but a different session, you get an alert warning you about...
something that doesn't make sense.

The correct option is to cancel, then iTunes goes ahead and syncs everything
correctly.

Since when did Cancel mean Go ahead with Plan A?

Also, the app screen manager. To move apps you have to:

Click a screen with the app Wait for it to zoom Drag the app Wait for the
target screen to zoom Wait for the other apps to shuffle around Drop the app

Why is the zooming necessary? Why can't you just drag and drop without
zooming? Why does the zooming cover some screens, so sometimes you can't drop
the app on the one you want?

Why can't you make folders in the file space of apps, and drag and drop files
to/from the folders? Why can't you drag and drop a load of files at once?

And so on. _So many_ elements of the design should be in textbooks as classic
examples of how not to make a UI.

------
iambatman
I've got 200GB+ of photos,maybe 10 times that in video, all because I have
kids and I'll probably never look at most of them again , yet I NEED to save
them somewhere!

~~~
greyskull
[https://www.backblaze.com/](https://www.backblaze.com/) ?

Archive the older stuff. Simple suggestion.

------
numbers
I have a frew questions for users who already have Photos:

1\. Is it possible to use Photos without paying for iCloud? 2\. Does it work
like iPhotos where there's a huge library that's created and organized by
Photos and I can't just go in that folder using finder to look at something?
3\. Is it fast?

~~~
outsidetheparty
Yes, Yes, and Yes

~~~
zyxley
"Free" has the caveat that it uses iCloud storage, though.

~~~
outsidetheparty
iCloud is optional.

------
tempodox
This is one product that's definitely not for me. The UI is dumbed down beyond
the pain threshold, removing access to the settings that interest me,
organising photos after criteria that are irrelevant for me. And iCloud
storage? Worst idea ever since mobile carriers make you pay through the nose
for every byte of download and thrice as much for upload.

I can't for the life of me figure out who this product is for. Apple destroyed
what has worked before, leaving us with broken crap that's too expensive to
use, if you even wanted to use it.

There was a time when I used to look forward to what Apple might come up with
next. By now, I only expect more destruction of previously existing
functionality in exchange for higher prices. Apple has become a poisoned
fruit.

~~~
tempodox
Seriously, if I need an external service for everything from text editing
upward, why the heck would I even bother with this non-OS? Oh, right, I'm
locked into it if I want to make native iOS apps and the like. That's really
the only reason that remains.

------
bluthru
Finally! I wonder why Apple didn't discuss this at the recent watch event?
This is a huge feature that is a big selling point. Maybe Apple wants users to
trickle in?

~~~
dewey
Because it's not really related to the watch, they did discuss and unveil it
at the last WWDC keynote though. It was also available as a beta version for
developers for some time now.

~~~
bluthru
Nor is HBO Now or the MacBook.

------
OmarIsmail
I would love to be able to use my unlimited storage capacity with Amazon prime
as a cloud storage center for this, but alas.

It's obvious that the seamless cloud storage will become the default moving
forward, I just hope it doesn't take too long for other services to implement
the same functionality. I really really don't want to be locked into Apple's
ecosystem, but damn are they making it tempting.

~~~
gress
How does this lock you in? Your photos are all still on your Mac filesystem.

~~~
OmarIsmail
Locked in from the perspective that if I want to extract all the important
value from Photos then I need to be using iOS devices, my family needs to be
using iOS devices (for easy sharing). As soon as you cross the non-Apple
boundary the experience goes from wonderful to garbage.

~~~
gress
You mean that if you want the features of Apple software, you need to use
apple hardware?

------
lispm
A huge downgrade for Aperture users. :-(

~~~
scrumper
Is it? I was looking for some information that compared it to Aperture which
I've been using since v1. I'd love to have an Aperture which works seamlessly
with iCloud photo library; nearly all my photos are taken on an iPhone these
days and it'd be great to have them integrated into the stuff I use for more
deliberate photography.

~~~
sib
Yes, it's a pretty big step down in functionality from Aperture. It's
basically 80% iPhoto, 20% Aperture.

~~~
udp
How does Aperture compare to Lightroom? (I've only ever used the latter.)

~~~
kingnight
Aperture had way better UI. Lightroom had more powerful editing.

I think Photos will have the best of both worlds once Photos.framework comes
to Mac.

------
treve
The only thing this application needs to be to improve on iPhoto, is to not be
extremely slow at a few thousand photos.

------
sozerberk
Even though this functionality is very handy, I think I will never trust
iCloud ever again due to many loss of data and time to solve syncing problems.
If this photo syncing is anything like keychain syncing, I will have very bad
time and while password recovery only takes time, photo recovery won't be
possible.

------
eibrahim
I use Lightroom on my MacBook pro and my library is saved inside Dropbox. I
can easily share folders with a Dropbox link and my photos are synced
everywhere. The Dropbox upgrade gives me a terabyte of storage and can be used
for more than just photos.

~~~
speik
That's not a bad system. Can I ask how long it took you to upload it all to
Dropbox?

~~~
eibrahim
Not sure. I have a very fast connection and my MacBook is always on. I wasn't
paying attention but I think everything was uploaded in a couple of days or
so.

------
mratzloff
So this replaces iPhoto, correct?

~~~
jasode
Also replaces some (not all) features of Aperture.

If you scroll to the bottom of the Mac store at
[http://www.apple.com/mac/](http://www.apple.com/mac/)

... you'll see that the link for Aperture[1]

[http://www.apple.com/aperture/](http://www.apple.com/aperture/)

redirects to

[http://www.apple.com/osx/photos/](http://www.apple.com/osx/photos/)

------
jmgtan
Really excited to try this out, had bad experience with iPhoto's performance
the past few months.

I recently switched to using the Photos functionality of Synology. It's not as
pretty as Apple's software but it's very fast.

------
dankohn1
How can I have two photo streams both feed into the same Photos account? My
wife and I take tons of pictures of our kids. How should we configure things
so that we can see all the pictures we've both taken?

~~~
zachberger
Have you looked at family sharing? [https://www.apple.com/icloud/family-
sharing/](https://www.apple.com/icloud/family-sharing/)

~~~
dankohn1
There doesn't seem to be a way to have all photos taken added to the family
album. I still have to manually add each photo.

------
lloydde
There is a lot of references to "your" in the OP, but I suspect it is not the
plural form. The problem my family has is our ever diverging personal photo
collections. I've yet to find a solution.

~~~
lh7777
That's right. To some degree it makes sense -- most families probably don't
want to share _every_ photo they take. But most probably also won't bother to
manually add every photo they do want to share to a shared stream. I'm not
sure there's a great solution to this, but it'd be awesome if somebody figured
it out.

My wife and I have a similar problem with our music libraries. I have all of
our music in my library and on iTunes match. I'd like for her to be able to
access music in iTunes match too, but there's no way to do that without
sharing an iCloud account and thus sharing everything else iTunes related.

------
frik
Hopefully some of its new features make it to iOS8 "Photos" app. The various
views (like "Year") and editing tools would fit perfectly for iPad and to some
extend also iPhone.

------
yitchelle
Anyone know if this will work in a household that has a mix OSX and Android
devices? Eg, will I be able to see the photos on my Samsung S4 that my wife
have just uploaded with her iPad mini?

~~~
uptown
If you browse to iCloud.com you should be able to.

------
Someone
_" And with iCloud Photo Library, a lifetime’s worth of photos and videos can
be stored in the cloud"_

So, the big question: is that really _can_be, or is it _must_be stored in the
cloud?

~~~
_jsn
Can, not must.

~~~
Someone
Thanks.

------
cjbarber
This is great.

Even cooler: Print Products!

[http://www.apple.com/osx/print-products/](http://www.apple.com/osx/print-
products/) (discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342945))

A 20 page hardcover photo book costs $29.99. This is awesome.

~~~
cpr
Yes, pretty nice, though a bit pricey. I think iPhoto has had this option for
a decade.

~~~
72deluxe
But obviously poorly marketed!

I wonder if it'll be available in the UK. Hopefully! I say "hopefully" because
attempting to upload photos from my wife's iPad to photobox-like websites is
incredibly painful or impossible (or you must use their app due to the iPad
having no filesystem access, where ordinary file-access HTML elements just
appear as blank spaces in forms, making it IMPOSSIBLE to upload from a
website, thereby forcing you to install some rubbish crippled app).

~~~
diroussel
I've bought photo calendars from iPhoto in the UK before, worked well, looked
good.

------
hsshah
I currently use Carousel by Dropbox and have 200GB worth of pics and family
videos. Ofcourse I use selective sync to not have them on my MBP

I like Apple photos auto smart sync and a native Mac app.

If I want to move/copy my pics from Dropbox to iCloud drive, any alternatives
to having download them to local machine and upload again to Apple server? Any
cloud based sync product that supports iCloud?

------
Osiris
This feels a lot like vendor-lock-in to me. It "just works" as long as
everything you own runs OS X or iOS.

------
andygambles
Would really like to see Album Sharing rather tha shared photostreams. Help
reduce duplicate photos on the device.

Also as a Family Sharer I'd prefer the icloud space to be shared across all.
Rather than buy 200GB for 5 people I can get away with 200GB for everyone.

------
username223
I don't care that much about the "cloud" stuff -- I already pay for unlimited
online backups -- but it looks like Photos will finally do lens correction.
Yay! Now I can finally shoot raw without messing with Lightroom.

~~~
username223
"EDIT": Nevermind. I installed it, and it still apparently doesn't do lens
correction. Dear Apple: some people like to do more than take phone selfies.

------
ryandetzel
Now if only they let my Android upload photos to iCloud I would be a buyer.

------
jjmata
Has anybody gotten confirmation of EyeFi cards being able to upload to iCloud
so we can use Photos as the universal photo browser?

------
cc22
Does this still work with 'get my iPhone photos in a normal folder' (e.g. for
Lightroom) hacks like photostream2folder?

------
mahyarm
iCloud doesn't scale in this case. Take about 1 1:00 video per week for a few
years and you've already gone over the 1TB iCloud service limit. Anyone who's
kept their personal photo history for 7+ years probably already goes over this
limit.

It's pretty sad, because it's probably the fastest photo management app out
there.

------
flipmonk
Finally! This beta has proven beyond reasonable doubt of their reasoning
behind shuttering aperture.

In love! Phenomenal product, this.

------
jarjoura
My problem with iCloud Photos is that I have 100 GB of photos that will now
show up on my iPhone and iPad. I used to turn on iPhoto syncing with a 6-month
window. So I'm not sure I want my entire collection with me always. :-|

Edit: I know it doesn't actually download all 100 GB of image data, only the
thumbnails. My point is that I now have a 15 years of photos with me at all
times and I'm not sure I want that.

~~~
gress
It won't download 100GB of photos to your devices. Instead it will download
only the thumbnails and intelligently download the photos as needed.

~~~
jarjoura
I know that, but it still is 15 years of photos I now have UI showing me that
I have access to at all times and I'm not sure I want that.

~~~
fredsted
then disable the feature

------
callesgg
i am terified of apple and photo library's.

cause I used iphoto and suddenly one day the meta data like sorting and
descriptions and tags went corrupt.

then it happened again and I stopped using it.

------
dfine
The iOS-ification of Mac OS continues apace. A good thing, in my opinion.

~~~
fit2rule
I disagree with you, I think its a terrible path to be going down. I do not
agree with anyone who thinks that Cloud'ifying everything serves the needs of
the end user better. But I guess I'm alone in this - it sure seems Apple is
hell bent on removing the filesystem and other traditional paradigms upon
which computers have been built for decades, and replacing them with .. other
things .. that only they control.

~~~
CraigRood
>I do not agree with anyone who thinks that Cloud'ifying everything serves the
needs of the end user better.

It's easy for use to forget what actually happens in the 'real world' when we
spend so much time in the 'tech world'.

The cloud is extremely powerful in that it bridges the gap between devices,
and users. if I have a photo on my phone then why cant I view it on my
computer without hooking up and importing. Or if I have photos taken on my
DSLR, why then cant I share them remotely from my phone to others whilst I'm
out and about.

~~~
fit2rule
Thats fine - but build the sharing features into the operating systems of the
computer, not into some remote uncontrollable (by the user) data center, which
is being used to process the data for purposes other than those the user
specify .. any modern desktop computer is capable of representing itself in a
fashion that the sharing occurs, sans cloud.

------
peapicker
But I don't want my photos in the cloud.

~~~
wmeredith
They don't have to be in the cloud.

------
gadders
Looks like Apple have invented Picasa.

Seriously - what is new here?

