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I've stopped using iCloud Photos for my wife and me after we discovered the undeleted photos issue. Undeleted photos and undeleted photos in messages coming bac

by sosuke 11y ago

I've stopped using iCloud Photos for my wife and me after we discovered the undeleted photos issue. Undeleted photos and undeleted photos in messages coming back from the iCloud were very frightening. If I can't delete from a cloud service I can't trust it. Delete was redefined. I was in denial for a bit actually thinking that no programmer would do that.

eridius 11y ago
Can you elaborate? I've never heard of this issue before. Especially when you mention "photos in messages", because Messages.app and iCloud Photo Library are completely unrelated (photos in iMessages are stored in the Messages database and aren't even in your local photo library unless you manually save the photo).
- sosuke 11y ago
  I spent a while with higher level Apple support talking to developers over a weeks time. What happened was photos in message threads that had been deleted, and photos that had been deleted, reappeared during the iOS8 update. Supposedly it was a bug in iOS6 that was fixed by iOS7 so that was the explanation of why these zombie photos appeared again when iOS8 had the view message history photos feature. That is the best I can remember at least it was a good while back now.
  - eridius 11y ago
    Curious bug. I'm still confused as to what this has to do with iCloud Photo Library though (or even with the Photos app). The bug as described isn't related to iCloud at all, since your iMessages are stored in a local database and aren't persisted on Apple's servers (it sounds like the bug was the message thread was deleted from the local database, but not the message attachments, so the new View Photos feature was able to find those orphaned photos).
macintux 11y ago
I haven't looked at the source article, but it's worth noting that delete is a decidedly non-trivial operation in a distributed system, especially those designed to not lose data when servers fail. Objects resurrecting themselves are a reasonable tradeoff for some use cases.

by sosuke 11y ago

eridius 11y ago

Can you elaborate? I've never heard of this issue before. Especially when you mention "photos in messages", because Messages.app and iCloud Photo Library are completely unrelated (photos in iMessages are stored in the Messages database and aren't even in your local photo library unless you manually save the photo).

sosuke 11y ago
I spent a while with higher level Apple support talking to developers over a weeks time. What happened was photos in message threads that had been deleted, and photos that had been deleted, reappeared during the iOS8 update. Supposedly it was a bug in iOS6 that was fixed by iOS7 so that was the explanation of why these zombie photos appeared again when iOS8 had the view message history photos feature. That is the best I can remember at least it was a good while back now.
- eridius 11y ago
  Curious bug. I'm still confused as to what this has to do with iCloud Photo Library though (or even with the Photos app). The bug as described isn't related to iCloud at all, since your iMessages are stored in a local database and aren't persisted on Apple's servers (it sounds like the bug was the message thread was deleted from the local database, but not the message attachments, so the new View Photos feature was able to find those orphaned photos).

macintux 11y ago

I haven't looked at the source article, but it's worth noting that delete is a decidedly non-trivial operation in a distributed system, especially those designed to not lose data when servers fail. Objects resurrecting themselves are a reasonable tradeoff for some use cases.