Spoiler: I like these, but they’re not my picks
2015 proved to be a gigantic year for Apple in terms of shipping totally new products and seeing services go live for the first time. Apple Watch is a brand new category for the iPhone maker, the new Apple TV delivers on long-awaited update to the streaming box, and iPad Pro is every bit the giant tablet that was rumored for so long. My two absolute favorite new things from Apple this year, however, aren’t new hardware products but instead two services that have been criticized but have made a meaningful difference in my everyday life…
The first is the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library. I stuck with iPhoto for far too long, but the photo management app and the old iLife suite was easily one of the most compelling parts of owning a Mac for me during iPhoto’s prime. I developed a workflow for capturing photos, sorting them all out, and keeping them around between the iPhone and iPhoto, and I didn’t want to let go of that workflow even when Apple announced in 2014 that iPhoto was dead and Photos for Mac would eventually replace it. I’d take a month’s worth of photos and videos on my iPhone, dump them into iPhoto and create an event called MONTH YEAR, then sync the library back to my iPhone. This meant having the highest capacity iPhone available and not syncing videos back, but it generally worked for me right up to Photos and iCloud Photo Library’s launch toward the start of this year.
Enter Photos for Mac and iCloud Photo Library. The migration process was basically Apple saying “push this button and trust us” which didn’t work out well for everyone, and my roughly 10,000 photo and 500 video library took over a week to upload to iCloud on my mediocre broadband connection, but eventually everything got sorted out in the right place and I haven’t looked back since. I no longer worry about manually organizing my library by month and year as Photos has far superior time-based organization than iPhoto did, and iCloud Photo Library lets me have access to all those videos too that were previously only accessible from my Mac.
Photos and iCloud Photo Library also lets me edit photos from any device and see those changes everywhere else, delete photos from anywhere and have my library update, and access my 13,000 photos and 1,000 videos and counting from 16GB iPads. Albums also sync across devices without having to sync with iTunes on the Mac, which has been huge for me. Over the weekend, I sat down to make a couple 2016 calendars in Photos for Mac using family photos for grandparents as Christmas gifts. I’d been tapping the heart to favorite the best photos taken throughout the year so I had a nice bucket of about 150 photos to choose from with the Favorites album which made the process much easier than in past years.
There’s still a lot I’d like to see from Photos and iCloud Photo Library, like real support on the new Apple TV, syncing Faces and Google Photos-like search, and access to Projects like calendar, card, and book creation from iPhones and iPads and across different Macs, but year one of Photos and iCloud has been a grand slam for me personally. I’ve seen horror stories of how iCloud Photo Library has been a nightmare for some people, but I’ve been fortunate not to have any major hiccups past the initial, lengthy upload process.
In fact, iCloud Photo Library and Photos for Mac saved my summer vacation photos back in July. My iPhone was off Wi-Fi for several days and not backing up to iCloud when the software had to be erased for one reason or another. Although my iPhone hadn’t been backing up everything, iCloud Photo Library was sucking up my Disney World family photos and downloading them back on my Mac hundreds of miles away. Exactly what I wanted.
And for my number two pick for favorite new Apple thing of 2015: Apple Music, but not on its own. Beats Music was totally fine and worked really well for me. Apple Music is in more places like iTunes and CarPlay and works with Siri, but it’s Apple Music paired with Family Sharing that makes it something special to me.
$10/month for a single membership, or $15/month for up to six memberships means for $5 more each month I can share access to Apple’s catalog of music with people in my family that only buy a few albums on iTunes, never buy digital music but have years of physical media, or just settle for what plays on the radio.
Apple’s clever here, too, because where I could see myself starting and stopping a Music subscription on my own, I’d be in trouble (or at least disappointed) if my family lost access to their newly made music libraries and playlists.
Family Sharing on its own lets you share paid apps and iTunes media purchases, but it’s still sort of technical to access these without being shown. Apple Music through Family Sharing is generally very easy to use, however, aside from a few road bumps during setup you may experience.
There are other new Apple things that I really appreciate this year. Apple’s Podcasts app got a lot better in iOS 9, just as my previous favorite podcasts app Instacast was discontinued. I’m still happy with my Apple Watch for the most part, and I’m increasingly impressed with what I can comfortably do with the iPad Pro (like write this piece on Wordpres through Safari while watching Tweetbot streaming in a column), but Photos + iCloud Photo Library and Apple Music with Family Sharing are two new Apple things from 2015 that I would not want to trade or replace.
How about you? What’s your favorite new Apple thing and why? Let us know in the comments, and vote in our poll for new products and peripherals too.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. Now please make iOSX even more pro-worthy, Apple.
And yes, I love Apple Music as well!
I cosign on the Apple Music pick, having the Family Plan is worth it for me & how it’s set up to each of my families personal taste.
I’d have to go with SplitView/SlideOver for my next favorite thing… Only negative I have with it its not having the ability to remove the apps. And hopefully Apple provides a better portrait layout experience… One app on top & the other app on bottom compared to the left/right it currently has.
I’m not sure if it is the norm in America, but where I live families definitely don’t share finances. And that is the single biggest downfall of Apple’s family options. It should rather work like devices, where I can nominate up to 5 of them. In the same way, I want to nominate my family members, but keep our finances apart. If I decide to buy family membership, that’s one thing. But if my partner buys a movie or song or app, it should be for THEIR account, not mine. So no, I don’t agree.
Photos is good. It took me a while to get used to it but it works well across my devices on local WiFi. iCloud Photo Library, is another story. No I’m not going to rant about how it trashed my library. To be honest I have not used it. No, the trouble is while I’d love to use it, Apple has made it an all or nothing deal. You have to upload your whole library. I don’t want or need the pictures from my fathers funeral in 2003 in the cloud. I don’t want or need the shots from my Africa trip in 2002 in the cloud. I don’t want or need the several hundred pictures I took in 2006 for a household inventory in the cloud. If Apple would let me set a point to start uploading I’d be there with bells on. But no, I can’t say “only pictures after 2015” or “only pictures less than eighteen months old” goes to the cloud.You mentioned that it took you a week to upload your library. I suspect you don’t really need much of that up there. Also the only way I could upload my library would be to bump my subscription from 50GB to probably 500GB. Nope, I’m not paying to store old pictures on the cloud when I don’t want them up there in the first place. I have a nice archive stored and backed up locally thank you very much, and that’s where they will stay.
Oh you are funny… for me the change over lost most of my photos – i had apple technicians all the way from California calling me up to help me…in the end they said it wasnt retrievable but they wanted to collect logs and data to try and avoid something like this happening again…
But then the next issue was the limited 5gb of icloud storage – i mean, really? To store your photos and videos across multiple devices – worse is that people like google and microsoft were offering double, then triple, and i think microsoft now offers 4-5x as much storage FOR FREE… thanks apple…nice idea, but once you have icloud back up, that’s not a lot of space for photos (never mind videos) — only this year they reduced prices to a reasonable level (still only 5gb free)…
As for Apple Music — once again it deleted my music from my CDs and transferred the remaining amount to the cloud of which worked via streaming – i only realised it did this when i went out and tried to play my music without internet connection — thanks again apple… worse for me is that i am currently working in another country and my CDs are all back home…
Apple is very poor at services and software…
Their tech was once solid – but now very limited due to so much glue… forget about repairing stuff… if it breaks – it’s gonna cost a lot to repair and it might be best just buying new… apple stuff is not very Eco and long lasting…they have put a shelf life on all their stuff – which is about 2 years!!!
I totally agree about the 5G of space. I love the Google Photos app – once you add that app to your phone, all your photos are backed up automatically AND none of them count against your storage. You really can’t beat that. Google Photos also uploads so much faster than iCloud does to Photostream or iCloud photos. I still use the iphone native camera & photo app, but in the background, without me doing anything, Google uploads my photos. I can go into my Drive account anytime on any device and my photos are sorted by time and searchable. No contest.
The best product? Apple’s video streaming/tv bundle. Oh wait, that’s next year.
I really appreciate my Watch and TV., and both have a ton of potential. The watch like a lot of Apple products is what you make of it. Great for notifications, controlling music on your phone, fitness tracking, and is a beautiful watch (go figure). The TV is similar in a lot of ways to the previous gen, though voice navigation and App Store availability are huge additions. I would also credit the iPad pro for getting into the iPad game again. After lusting over one for some time, ended getting back on the iPad train with the air 2.
Thecipad pro does it for me.
I’d have to say my Apple Watch and 6s plus. Love the synchronization of each along with the quick access to the apps on my 6s and the watch just an amazing piece of technology.
“lets me edit photos from any device and see those changes everywhere else” This isn’t true. When i take a photo on my iPhone, it syncs to my iPad. To edit it on my iPad, it forces me to duplicate it. Then i can edit the duplicate photo. But the changes stay on my iPad only. Not quite the eco-system they portrayed.
I’m not sure if it is the norm in America, but where I live families definitely don’t share finances. And that is the single biggest downfall of Apple’s family options. I should rather work like devices, where I can nominate up to 5 of them. In the same way, I want to nominate my family members, but keep our finances apart. If I decide to buy family membership, that’s one thing. But if my partner buys a movie or song or app, it should be for THEIR account, not mine. The issue becomes compounded given our country’s poor exchange rate.
So sorry, I cannot agree that anything that contains Apple’s current interpretation of a family option is genius, or even good.
May I ask where you come from? This is the first time I hear of a family where finances are not shared. You and your wife make your own money and don’t share the money? When you buy something for your apartment / house you split the price? Or did I misunderstand something?
Michael Bischof
I lived in the US and now Canada. It wasn’t common but I knew of several families that the husband and wife ran parellel lives. they each had their own jobs, bank accounts, they only were together in bed, with the resulting children, and for taxes, maybe. It struck me as weird too but they were happy.
uniszuurmond
You’ve touched on a weakness in iCloud. Why can’t we share an account and decide what we want to share and with whom? My wife and I share one iCloud account. Photos, keychain, that’s fine. Why can’t I have one set of bookmarks shared between my devices and she has her set shared between hers? It’s a symptom of the “all or nothing” nature of iCloud I alluded to above.
I have to be honest I really do not get the Photos app. I am on my third try but find it illogical and confusing. Simple put by having all photos as the main driver it is impossible to know what photo’s one has put in to which self-created albums.
For example when out and about I may see a sign or a photo on Facebook and want to save/keep it. That bit is easy and I may do this a lot but when I look through my phone, iPad or Mac I do not know which I have added to a library called say Humour. It’s so pain full. Also I have a really good folder structure, after all photos are personal and relevant to the person and how they want to group them, Apple Photo’s makes this painful and confusing. I do not say this lightly given I use the complicated and powerful Adobe Lightroom. This though seem more logical and again I do not say this likely as I hate Adobe with a passion I feel embarrassed about.
I have to say I feel the same way about Apple Music, it’s destroyed what I had and I am tempted to switch back but apathy and being able to afford to keep paying will keep me at it no doubt. That said I love my MacBook 12 inch Retina but I find myself less wowed recently.
It’s interesting that I’ve started using Windows 10 as well as my Mac’s…