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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 doin

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_ 11y ago
>>> 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?
- zyxley 11y ago
  I think the biggest difference here is that the iCloud Photo Library functionality will back up/sync new photos but won't delete existing photos unless you explicitly tell it to do so, which prevents data loss from corrupted or accidentally deleted local files (which Dropbox will cheerfully sync along to each other machine you have).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- cannikin 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    That's more of a problem with iOS than a problem with Dropbox.
    - andkon 11y ago
      "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 11y ago
        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.
  - danieldk 11y ago
    That's a probably a limitation of iOS. E.g. on my Android phone, I sync photos with Bittorrent sync. I can view them using the gallery app, like any other photo.
- kevinchen 11y ago
  Sure, Dropbox will allow access to the files across all your devices. But it doesn't expose the photo metadata -- things like location, date/time, face recognition -- in a way that lets you filter meaningfully.
gcr 11y ago
How does this compare to Carousel, Dropbox's photo backup offering from last year? https://carousel.dropbox.com/ https://carousel.dropbox.com/ Carousel is great as long as you have enough Dropbox space for your photos. Anecdotally, I find I could trust Dropbox's backup model more than Apple's because I understand it better.
- comex 11y ago
  Apple's solution has the advantage of working with every app that reads from or writes to the camera roll - i.e. photos are downloaded on demand, and uploaded when taken - rather than only a single manager app. Of course, this is an unfair comparison, since third parties are not allowed to hook that deeply into iOS, but it is what it is.
  - danieldk 11y ago
    On the other hand, Carousel uploads are in Dropbox, automatically syncing to laptops and desktops, giving direct access to any application.
- hjnilsson 11y ago
  Well, Photos is a photo management & editing solution in addition to being a photo backup. While Carousel is only a photo backup solution (no albums, no editing controls). So it's not really comparable.
  - danieldk 11y ago
    Carousel does have albums: https://carousel.dropbox.com/help/7475 https://carousel.dropbox.com/help/7475 More annoying is the lack of Chromecast support :).
jsmeaton 11y ago
(Slightly off topic) One thing I haven't figured out yet (I haven't dedicated more than a couple of hours though) is how to backup all of the pictures from my photo library. I have a NAS, and I'd like to copy all of the photos (not the library) to a particular share. Do you know if Photo will help with that?
- kingnight 11y ago
  all the source photos are contained within a "masters" folder inside the library package(folder). point your backup mechanism to that subfolder and you should be all set.
  - jsmeaton 11y ago
    Perfect, thank you!
godzillabrennus 11y ago
I had my iCloud backups for my iPhone corrupt and I lost months of text messages. Fortunately everything else was backed up. Apple was unable to help recover anything. I will not be jumping on this store all my stuff with Apple. I need tridundancy between different cloud providers to have any semblance of faith I'll be able to recover my data if something happens to my device.
- eridius 11y ago
  Two comments: 1. You lost your device at the same time as your iCloud backups were corrupted? How did they even get corrupted? I've never heard of that happening before. 2. If you're worried, you can always do local backups with iTunes.

_ZeD_ 11y ago

>>> 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?

zyxley 11y ago
I think the biggest difference here is that the iCloud Photo Library functionality will back up/sync new photos but won't delete existing photos unless you explicitly tell it to do so, which prevents data loss from corrupted or accidentally deleted local files (which Dropbox will cheerfully sync along to each other machine you have).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cannikin 11y ago
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 11y ago
  That's more of a problem with iOS than a problem with Dropbox.
  - andkon 11y ago
    "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 11y ago
      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.
- danieldk 11y ago
  That's a probably a limitation of iOS. E.g. on my Android phone, I sync photos with Bittorrent sync. I can view them using the gallery app, like any other photo.
kevinchen 11y ago
Sure, Dropbox will allow access to the files across all your devices. But it doesn't expose the photo metadata -- things like location, date/time, face recognition -- in a way that lets you filter meaningfully.

gcr 11y ago

How does this compare to Carousel, Dropbox's photo backup offering from last year? https://carousel.dropbox.com/ https://carousel.dropbox.com/ Carousel is great as long as you have enough Dropbox space for your photos. Anecdotally, I find I could trust Dropbox's backup model more than Apple's because I understand it better.

comex 11y ago
Apple's solution has the advantage of working with every app that reads from or writes to the camera roll - i.e. photos are downloaded on demand, and uploaded when taken - rather than only a single manager app. Of course, this is an unfair comparison, since third parties are not allowed to hook that deeply into iOS, but it is what it is.
- danieldk 11y ago
  On the other hand, Carousel uploads are in Dropbox, automatically syncing to laptops and desktops, giving direct access to any application.
hjnilsson 11y ago
Well, Photos is a photo management & editing solution in addition to being a photo backup. While Carousel is only a photo backup solution (no albums, no editing controls). So it's not really comparable.
- danieldk 11y ago
  Carousel does have albums: https://carousel.dropbox.com/help/7475 https://carousel.dropbox.com/help/7475 More annoying is the lack of Chromecast support :).

jsmeaton 11y ago

(Slightly off topic) One thing I haven't figured out yet (I haven't dedicated more than a couple of hours though) is how to backup all of the pictures from my photo library. I have a NAS, and I'd like to copy all of the photos (not the library) to a particular share. Do you know if Photo will help with that?

kingnight 11y ago
all the source photos are contained within a "masters" folder inside the library package(folder). point your backup mechanism to that subfolder and you should be all set.
- jsmeaton 11y ago
  Perfect, thank you!

godzillabrennus 11y ago

I had my iCloud backups for my iPhone corrupt and I lost months of text messages. Fortunately everything else was backed up. Apple was unable to help recover anything. I will not be jumping on this store all my stuff with Apple. I need tridundancy between different cloud providers to have any semblance of faith I'll be able to recover my data if something happens to my device.

eridius 11y ago
Two comments: 1. You lost your device at the same time as your iCloud backups were corrupted? How did they even get corrupted? I've never heard of that happening before. 2. If you're worried, you can always do local backups with iTunes.