Google Photos
My relationship with Apple’s hardware is simple: I’m happily locked in, and not changing platforms any time soon. But my relationship with Apple’s software is complex: I want to love it, but every time Apple decides to “throw everything away” and “start over” with an app, it’s disruptive — and for many users, unnecessary. From my perspective, users weren’t complaining that Apple’s popular photo apps iPhoto or Aperture were hopelessly broken or even deficient in major ways, yet Apple discontinued both of them last month to release Photos, a bare-bones alternative no one seems to love. On the relationship scale, I didn’t abandon Aperture; Aperture abandoned me (and a lot of other people).
So yesterday’s announcement of the free cross-platform photo and video storage app Google Photos couldn’t have come at a better time. Apple has struggled to explain why it now offers two separate photo syncing services, neither with the virtually unlimited photo and video storage Google is now giving users — notably all users, including Mac and iOS users. Moreover, Apple has offered no sign that it’s going to drop the steep fees it’s charging for iCloud photo storage. With WWDC just around the corner, Apple has a big opportunity to match Google’s photo and video initiative, thrilling its customers in the process. If that doesn’t happen, I’m moving my collection into Google Photos, and not looking back…
Google Photos is pitched with Apple-like simplicity and power. You get unlimited free storage in what Google calls “high quality” resolution — 16 Megapixels for photos, 1080p for videos — or take 15GB of space for unlimited-resolution photos and videos. As of today, it’s fair to say that 16MP/1080p is enough resolution for most people; Google picked great numbers. To put the limits in perspective, Apple hasn’t yet released an iPhone or iPad with higher than 8MP resolution for stills or 1080p for videos, which means that anything you snap with iOS devices should look great on Google Photos. Most standalone cameras out there have higher than 16MP resolution at this point, and some cameras are moving into 4K (2160p) video resolution, but the numbers Google picked will let typical users get full enjoyment out of every photo or video they’ve ever created.
Yahoo’s Flickr service took a different direction two years ago, offering a then- (and still sorta) incredible 1TB of free photo storage. The hitches: Flickr’s free storage is ad-supported, with a $50 annual fee to eliminate ads, and video storage isn’t included. There’s also a theoretical cap, although 1TB is a lot of space for even large photos — that’s enough for more than a decade of images, perhaps two, unless you’re shooting giant-sized RAW images rather than standard JPEGs. Still, Google doesn’t cap your storage, prevent you from uploading videos, or run ads alongside your images. Those differences make Google Photos a better deal.
Apple Photos
Apple’s release of Photos hasn’t gone especially well. After abruptly announcing the discontinuation of iPhoto and Aperture, Apple effectively told professionals to switch to Adobe’s Lightroom (see our Adobe Lightroom CC/6 review here), and tried to convince everyone else to use the hugely stripped-down Photos. The major benefit of Photos is supposed to be a universal photo library that’s automatically synchronized across all of your devices. But you have to pay for it.
Photos pushes you to sign up for additional iCloud storage, which starts at a miserly 20GB for $12 per year ($1 per month) and grows to $240 per year for 1TB of photos and videos — prices that sounded crazy even before Yahoo and Google offered free alternatives. (Flickr previously offered unlimited, ad-free photo storage for $25 a year.) My own photo library is too large to store using iCloud, as it’s currently over 1.2TB without including home video files. But it would work just fine with Google Photos. For free.
From where I stand, giving users unlimited photo and video storage is unquestionably the right next move for Apple. Photos and home videos are some of the most important files people have; they’re some of the best records of your life (remember Blade Runner, anyone?), yet storing them, backing them up, and transferring them between devices is one of the biggest remaining hassles for Apple’s users. This is a rare situation where throwing money (specifically, additional servers) at a problem would actually make a positive difference for Apple’s customers. Many people have asked for more free iCloud space for device backups, which would be great, but I think a much larger percentage of Apple’s userbase would be thrilled to have Google-like photo and video storage.
Billionaires such as Carl Icahn can keep pushing to turn Apple’s gigantic bank account into a cash dispenser for shareholders, but I’d argue that it’s the right time for Apple to fund “free” photo and video storage as a major investment in long-term customer satisfaction and retention. Some of Apple’s “excess” profits could easily go towards what Google’s building: a giant virtual bank worth of safety deposit boxes, where customers are now storing their most precious possessions for as-needed access, anywhere. Once you upload a giant library to Google, what’s the chance you’ll download everything and do it again for another competitor?
If Apple’s going to match Google on the photo and video storage front, WWDC is the right time to make that announcement. I’m waiting until then to make my decision. Otherwise, I’m planning to move my photo library over to Google Photos, as there’s nothing on the horizon that will make Apple’s photo software or cloud services more compelling.
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How about we wait two weeks to see what Apple does before migrating our entire photo libraries to an advertising company?
That’s what I’m doing. But I’m not holding my breath between now and then.
That’s good that is what you’re doing. Yet your arguments for Google photos are that Apple just changed from iPhoto (2002-2015) and Aperture (2005-2015) to Photos, with no one really complaining about those products. You write for and Apple Blog, so I would assume you know a few things about Apple. They don’t keep things around long for sentimental value. They also plant the seeds of where they are going to ensure when they get there, it will (usually) be a world class experience. Photos is 2 months old.
Also, coming from Aperture, does the Google software really equal that? No? Then you aren’t likely to find that it will do what Aperture did, either, so this is an invalid point.
Lastly, you trust Google to not be disruptive? I would hardly call 13 and 10 years for iPhoto and Aperture, respectively, a category that fits into the “every time Apple decides to start over” and “disruptive” – and nothing at all is stopping you from continuing to use those apps if you wish.
Yet Google does the same thing. Or buys a technology, then abandons it at a quicker pace than Apple, in my experience.
So ultimately what I hear in this article is that you like the Google price point, and are willing to sacrifice some functionality for that price point. That integration at the OS level is not worth a few bucks a month to you. Completely understandable. But that isn’t the argument or problem you state as being solved, and you don’t illustrate how Google solved the problems you have outlined.
You are joking right. Google drops apps faster than any company on earth this photo app will be no exception. I don’t know why any one would give something as personal as photos to a company that makes money selling personal detail
I’m not making “arguments” for Google Photos. I’m also not saying that I would rely exclusively on Google Photos for all of my photographic needs. What I said unambiguously at the top and bottom of the article was that I would move my photo library over to Google Photos if Apple doesn’t have a more compelling alternative at WWDC. And I will.
I used and loved Aperture for years; I will continue to want a professional-grade image editing solution on my Mac, and feel really disappointed that Apple, which made a great one, just walked away from it. But this article is not about Aperture. As the title and article clearly state, it is primarily about my large photo and home video library, which is just too big for Apple’s Photos, and may have just found a new home in Google Photos.
Google’s solution offers me the ability to access my photo and video library from all of my devices for free. It does so at more than enough resolution for 90% of the things I actually do with photos. That’s why I’m willing to consider moving my library over to Google. Even if I were to prune my library down, the out-of-pocket annual cost to store (part of) it with Apple would be $240. There’s no way in hell I’m paying that much, or anything close to it, particularly given the increasing number of compelling free options from major players (Amazon, Yahoo, and Google) who understand the “customer sat” value of photo storage. Anyone who tries to trivialize this as being over “$4” clearly lacks basic reading comprehension and math skills.
The anti-Google responses I’ve read basically boil down to “privacy,” “uncertainty” and (substantially but not always fringe case) concerns about image quality. It’s a lot of FUD over a really compelling service that many people will use and enjoy. As I said in the article, I hope that Apple steps up and delivers a comparable or better option, because I would prefer to take it. But if that doesn’t happen at WWDC, I’m done waiting. Your mileage may obviously vary from mine. That’s why this is an opinion piece.
Agreed. Plus, this is Google taking WWDC14 and one upping.
Having migrated to iCloud Photo Library and Photos, I have to say, it is dead simple.
I pay $4/month happily. Apple isn’t scanning my pictures and doing me the “favor” of tagging people for me. They also aren’t collecting any data from my pictures.
Hey, if you want free and don’t mind what they do with your pictures, it’s great there is an option.
I’ll stick with the fully integrated Apple offerings.
Because as great as Flickr (which I use) and this free unlimited option from Google may be? I can’t easily send any photo I have from any other app like I can with Photos. That service alone is worth it to me
Though I wouldn’t complain if the 200 GB option dropped from $4/month to $1
You’re hopelessly naive if you think Apple isn’t doing the same with your stuff on their cloud. They are, they just don’t tell you while Google is open about it. Even so, to either company trends are more important than the images themselves…if you’re photographing a lot of dogs, the service just learns that you like dogs, perhaps what breed, this data may then be used learn what kind of dogs are preferred by what demographic. By the time you, the individual, begin to see the results of this data mining you’re seeing a far more generalized result with your individual data lost in the swarm.
@Nick – source that Apple is mining my photos and their metadata?
Faces function in Photos will allow Apple to analyze your data.
If any analysis has taken place on an image, such as tagging of faces or location, then your data has been mined.
In fact, the situation right now is Google is just ahead of the curve in terms of image recognition. If Apple had the ability to release such software, it would with far greater fanfare and, I suspect you would be one of the people gushing about how amazing such a service is.
Finally, a healthy dose of privacy concern is completely valid and I get where you’re coming from…this is Google’s business model and as such, you have to exercise great concern when giving them any private information. However, the fact here is they cannot reuse any identifiable images, so whatever data they do mine is anonymous and part of a swarm of data. Your data itself is of no importance to anyone other than you…it is the overall trend that is valuable and at that point, your data is just one small datapoint in millions.
Here’s a job listing for a data mining scientist, so you know Apple mines data as well: http://www.kdnuggets.com/jobs/15/02-11-apple-data-mining-scientist.html
I probably wasn’t clear. My concern isn’t who uses what, or even what Goigle or Apple do with my anonymous data.
My “issue” if you would call it that is the author goes on all these “Apple changed and discards things so frequently when talking about products that are 10-13 years old (older than iOS and the proliferation of smartphones), while those products still function today, better than they did even 18 months ago. And that he is using that as a reason to dump Apple for Google, for those reasons. The Google demoed products, at best, match Apple. The differentiator is that Google is “unlimited” for no out of pocket cost, vs Apple’s pricing.
All of the issues, aside from Free, that are made as a reason are invalid. The author clearly wants all of his photos stored in the cloud for free, at a reasonably high quality. There is nothing wrong with that at all. But to use “Apple abandoned Aperture, so I am moving to Google” has nothing to do with Apple abandoning Aperture. It has to do with the price the author wants to pay for unlimited storage. That is again, fine.
But to make any arguments to the contrary weaken his argument. That is my point. The Google product for he desktop will not match Aperture. It will likely be Photos by Google.
Again, that is fine. The only difference is the space/cost factor, which is clearly, on the surface and from an out of pocket cost, clearly in Google’s favor.
My point was very simple. Apple discontinued Aperture, the program I’ve relied upon, and unless I want to switch to Adobe (which I don’t), the option they offer is Apple Photos. Given the choice between Apple Photos (today) or Google Photos, I’d go with Google Photos. If Apple changes that at WWDC, awesome. If not, I go with Google for my photo library. As I said, I happily use Apple hardware and am sticking with it. Anything else you try to read into the article is up to you.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, just ask all the female celebrities if what you are saying is true; the difference is, everyone gets to see your pictures.
@jmiko2015 Faces in Photos happens locally on the Mac and isn’t even shared with other devices.
@Heather – what are you talking about? I assume the iCloud account “hacks” that happened last year with Jennifer Lawrence etc? If so, do you even know what that was? It was social engineering that provided the access, not a failure on Apple’s part (at least not a failure in technology. It was a failure in process, which Apple has since corrected).
You sound like NFL fans of 31 non-New England teams when talking about spygate. All you remember is some early speculation, which in no way had any ounce of truth, but that doesn’t matter, you formed your opinion on a 140 character sound bite that was factually inaccurate.
What’s the advantage of Google Photos over flickr? I like the UI better for google photos but Flickr gives us option to keep all our photos private, it doesn’t degrade our photos no matter how big (i think) and its 1TB of free storage which is virtually unlimited
A crappy phone app, and a way way worse way to upload photos from computer?
Agreed! Even if Apple does nothing I will not move my library to Google’s servers. As you stated, they are an advertising company that also sells all your usage data and other such stats. I will not have my personal memories and life in general stored for their use. I would rather pay $4/month to have privacy and convince.
Google has promised, on the record, that Photos is a “private, sacred, secure safe place” for images. If there is specific evidence that it’s sharing Photos data with others, people should know about it, but unless that’s proven to be true, it’s just FUD.
it’s in the EULA, read it Jeremy!!
TL;DR http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/05/29/why-the-google-photos-license-agreement-is-keeping-me-out/
Back in summer 2011, Google had an Gmail outage that affected about 0.0018% of Gmail users, which still were thousands of Gmail accounts. One day I was trying to log in to Gmail and was told that my account didn’t exist. I panicked not understanding what happened. Later that day I read articles on the web about this glitch that with Gmail. Google promised to restore the accounts that were affected and after about 10 days, my account was back online. During these 10 days I was in bad shape because I used Gmail as an email where I received notifications of my bills, my statements, I stored all of my contacts, and I used the Gmail calendar to sync with my iPhone and for scheduling my own and my family events.
Google never contacted me to tell me that I was affected, to assure me they were working on this issue, and to give me an estimated time when my account would be back online. Until they restored my account, I had no idea if I would ever regain that data. I was fortunate that they restored everything and brought it back online, but it was then that I realized that because Google provides these services for free, they have absolutely no obligations to safeguard your information or even guarantee that they would not lose it. That was all on top of the fact that I constantly felt that my privacy was invaded because every time I would log in to my Gmail account, I would see ads based on what was said in the email that I was reading. The invasion of privacy was always my pet peeve, but when I realized that their service had no SLA, I decided to move everything to Me.com that a few months later became iCloud.
The moral of the story is: You Get What You Pay For
With pictures, you are entrusting your entire digital image library to Google that is not only going to try to monetize it, but will have no SLA and will be liable to lose all of your data without any guarantee that they would be able to recover it. If this is worth FREE to you, Jeremy, then go for it.
Nice story telecastle – however, we are on about Photos not Gmail.
Incidentally, you ever heard of iAd – Apple’s advertising platform? That is a service in which developers can embed adverts into their iOS applications by paying Apple some money, and guess what – those adverts can target people like you or me, using the data Apple hold on us. Not too dissimilar to Google’s targets ads actually.
Incidentally, you might want to also read up on the Terms of Service for iCloud too. Apple can at any point change it, lock you out, delete or cancel your account. My point is, NOTHING is completely secure and NOTHING is completely yours if you are using the cloud. That’s the nature of the beast :(
@Telecastle: iCloud email has had multiple outages since summer 2011, too. It happens, unfortunately.
@telecastle As someone who worked as an Apple Genius for 3 years… Trust me. Apple’s cloud services go down more frequently than you realize. Several times per year we had “small percentage” of users affected that had similar experiences to what you’ve described. It’s not just Google. In fact, when it comes to the unreliability of cloud services… It’s probably more Apple than Google.
Apple’s company is like a hardware savant. Everything they create is gold. But, their cloud services… Their more like a magician with Down’s syndrome. They might pull the bunny out of the hat with flair… But they forgot that bunnies need air to survive and the bunny suffocated and died… Whoops!
On an unrelated note… If anyone wants to see some of the almost creepy accurate results that I got with Google Photos’ new search feature… Check it out here: http://bit.ly/1KtMMBl
@Mike The EULA is a general purpose document Google uses across multiple services. They’ll probably need a Google Photos-specific version without the broad, cross-service language to assuage (IMO) unnecessary fears. But if you enjoy getting freaked out by EULAs, go take a look at Aperture’s (http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/aperture.pdf), particularly in the sections about usage and location data. Apple can gather your data, and share it with partners and third-party developers.
Just one excerpt: “You agree that Apple and its subsidiaries and agents may collect, maintain, process and use… usage and related information, including but not limited to information about your computer, system and application software, and peripherals…” Note “and related information” as well as “but not limited to.” Those phrases are about as broad and permissive on Apple’s data gathering/use side as they come.
So… yeah. EULAs tend to give companies a lot of room to collect and use data about you. Even Apple’s EULAs.
How about Apple GET AHEAD OF THE CURVE for once? Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is.
Apple’s ahead of the curve on many fronts, you just ignore them. 64-bit mobile processing, proper fingerprint recognition, actionable notifications from the lock screen, find my phone, categorized app permissions, a proper payment system (Apple Pay)… all things Google and Samsung have been playing catch-up to. But folks like you have an agenda and ignore all information that doesn’t fit your ideology.
WTF jimr450???
Actionable Notifications? Android had years before iOS.
Apple Pay: Google had a solid NFC payment system up and running years ago but it never caught on. But it worked.
I don’t mind a real discourse on where Apple is better than Android and vice versa, but let’s be honest while doing so.
The new Google Photos has convinced me to start using over Apple Photos app. Having unlimited photo and video backup for free is more appealing. Google Photos has won me over
What happens to panoramic photos greater than 16MP?
They count against your free 15Gb IIRC.
“Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.”
Give me Free unlimited storage and I’ll use AdblockPlus, FTW
AdBlock Plus is not going to save your photos from being used in any studies, stats sales, marketing analysis’, etc that Google could subject them to. Free storage is cool and all, but, I will pay my $4 for privacy and the like, at this point.
And don’ think Google won’t put a stop to that. it’s coming. BTW they still track you, and sell your info. AdblockPlus (which is meh) or Adblock can’t stop that.
IF Google collects datas from Photos, tailored advertising would still be a pretty small price to pay for unlimited high quality picture and video storage.
And what’s the worst that can happen? Food and travel ads?
Apple’s popular photo apps iPhoto or Aperture were hopelessly broken.
I’d love to hear the explanation and justification for this claim.
I never used Aperture, but I hated iPhoto. With large libraries, the app was very slow to load. The concept of sorting photos into “events” was a relic of the age when you would take your camera with you only on important days. Edits would not sync across devices, so why bother, especially since the editing tools were so sparse. If you wanted to sync your iPhone library with iPhoto you had to plug into iTunes, which is an especially awful experience. Photos synced from iPhoto to iPhone could not be edited on the phone without duplicating the photo, etc. These are just a few of the problems the Photos for OS X app solved.
Oh, and iPhoto for iOS was just garbage.
Oh please. You didn’t prove anything beyond your ignorance with that “retort.”
Me too. Rusty Cadillac is on a mission here. He’s obviously a very emotional and hateful Apple hater, it’s non stop on this thread. iPhoto and Aperture had bugs, but so does every piece of software. Calling it “hopelessly broken” requires explanation.
With my 40K photo library, iPhoto would take a minute or so to launch, but to become usable, sometimes I would have to wait 30+ minutes while iPhoto updated from Photostream and scanned for faces. I admit this is with an older 2010 MacBook Pro, but with a maxed processor for the time, 8 GB RAM, and a brand new SSD drive. Photos.app has none of the sluggishness that I had with iPhoto.
I really like the auto-tagging featured of Google Photos, but I really don’t want to give all my photos to them. I’m hoping Apple has some auto-tagging features up their sleeve, but I’m not holding my breath.
@Michael: So you’re happier with Photos OS X than you were with iPhoto? I’ve found Photos to be unbelievably sluggish – worse than iPhoto or Aperture – and though I’d agree on some of your other points about Photos’ benefits, syncing with iPhoto basically became a non-issue with Photo Stream.
@timothy: That’s so odd. My ~200k library runs terribly with Photos. Face detection tends not to be an issue after you let it run fully across your library [in the background] once. And in Aperture, at least, you could turn off Faces on the first screen of Preferences…
@Jeremy I have allowed face detection to complete, so maybe it I some other background process that iPhoto was doing to peg my CPU. But either way, Photos.app is a breath of fresh air, starts quickly, scrolls smoothly, and best of all is keeping photos from all sources in sync. So I am really happy with it.
I’m far from a pro photographer, but I have a few friends that are, and they *loved* Aperture…I never heard a single complaint from any of them regarding it, and they would talk about their gear / software *all* the time. They all switched to Lightroom :|
Sorry but you were not listening. The complaints were loud, and numerous
use Flickr if you must before Google.
As a die hard apple “fanboy” I was so please with the Google offering that I was actually about to do the same and simply ditch apple’s option, but I’ve found out that when you delete photos from the Google app it also manages my iCloud Photo library and saves me from having to manage two libraries at the same time.
Google really nailed it here and removed almost every pain imaginable with picture management and picture sharing.
Am I the only one that has to keep the phone awake and on the assistant page in order to sync!?
Mine has been preparing backup since I downloaded it.
Same here… Preparing Backup since my first try. BTW what the hell is that? An app that doesn’t work on background?
They fixed the issue in a bug patch release today.
good luck, but I already dislike what I see. Dislikes? (1) Its Google (2) Photo License Agreement (3) Restriction on Size
I’ll gladly pay for my rights not to be trampled
… Restriction on “Photo” size not the overall storage size.
OoO — In before the macfanboiz — Good article — I too think there are much better services compared to iCloud for photos. Flickr is great as well.
“Macfanboiz”? Seriously? The moment you use a nickname to describe a group (especially a lame one like macfanboiz or “sheeple”), I completely disregard your opinion as invalid…even if I agree with the gist of it.
The sad thing is, I bet you thought that nickname was clever.
Actually I was being sarcastic (hence the “z” at the end, do people actually use that when they’re being serious? who knew..) — but take it how you want…
translation: “I can’t argue from anything beyond emotion, so I’m going to insult you for using a name that describes me perfectly.
Before the macfanboiz, you should read the Terms of Service:
When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (…), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
So Google basically can do whatever they want with your photos, specially analyzed them to construct a more detailed profile about you to more important things than target you with ads…
Which is great!
Let’s see. Who’s in the business to selling your private data?
US Government? I give up.
No, they collect it rather than sell it. Jesus, you can’t even be a smartass correctly.
Which one is Google:
a) Government
b) Religion
c) Corporation
d) All of Above
Google is a corporation.
If you’re going to be this paranoid about where your data goes, you have to stop using any kind of credit card. Don’t fill out forms, either, and that goes for paper or online ones. Google is the least of my concerns when it comes to privacy. They’re pretty open about what is going on. No one else is.
For now, still doesn’t ‘optimize storage ‘ on iPhone. Only iCloud & Carosel do that.
You don’t need to “start over”. Your library migrates to Photos. iPhoto was approaching 15 years old. Time to move on. You still need to pay for Google’s service if you want the originals, raw files, or things over 16mp.
That’s true, so Apple should match Googles offering as they made their money though hardware sales, and more of it.
I downloaded the app store soon as it went live. Say what you will about android, their Web services are second to none. On top of that they’re free? Forget about it, done deal.
Damn you auto correct
Free is fine if you don’t mind all your data being aggregated and analyzed for marketing and advertisements. I will happily pay $4 for privacy and peace of mind.
we’re all different which is cool. i have no problem with them using me as a data point in return for them storing and making my photos available.
I am curious Andrew… (This is a legitimate question. I am not antagonizing or chastising with this question.) What is your problem with them aggregating your data?
As far as I can figure, Google would simply use that data to target us for ads and try to sell us stuff. But, they are going to try to sell us stuff anyway. Isn’t it a good thing that the ads will be interesting and relevant to us because of this research? Why should we care if they know our likes and dislikes? Aside from being paranoid of some futuristic dystopian society where the robots are controlling us, why does it matter? Or am I missing the bigger picture here.
Note: The differences in our usage patterns may be relevant here. I live a minimalistic lifestyle with relatively few possessions. I don’t store any kind of photos that I wouldn’t mind being broadcast during the Super Bowl. The only data that I wouldn’t really want someone to have access to would be my bank accounts (and just my account numbers… I wouldn’t care if they wanted to see my transaction history). Perhaps this is naive. I just don’t see what the issue is.
@Jesse Nichols
What you know today about network security, privacy, data-mining, social graphs, machine learning?
I’m not talking about what you have might read in some crappy maganize or blog, but what have you learned so far from reliable resources?
@rnc I have my CCNA and I am a web developer (7 years) with a good bit of experience in database management/security/integration, marketing, data analysis, front-end and back-end technologies, and limited experience with social graphs. I have no experience with machine learning. =)
So, while not a world-renowned expert… I have a decent amount of experience in these things. I just don’t have a problem with my photos being out there. If I found out that tomorrow everyone in the world could see my photo library… I wouldn’t care. Just curious why it bothers others so much…
@Jesse Nichols – ” If I found out that tomorrow everyone in the world could see my photo library… I wouldn’t care. Just curious why it bothers others so much…”
Let’s attack it from a different angle. There’s a company that’s building what amounts to a real-life Terminator (minus the skin and Austrian accent) that’s contracted by the military. This company is also in the line of fire of a national debate about the growing concern of sentient AI as well as autonomous “killer robots” that could have the ability to take a life without remorse or human intervention. These arguments have been posed by some of the world’s greatest and most influential minds of our time including Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
Now let’s say a division within that company is offering unlimited photo storage using a technology that scans faces as well as objects in a photo and will do so for free provided you allow the division, including the killer robot division that’s contracted with the military, to use your data in any way they see fit without any further consent or updates regarding revisions to the original agreement.
Maybe that will help you understand why it might “bother” some people how their information is used and for what purpose.
Am I suggesting Google is unknowingly (or knowingly and ignorantly) building a real-life SkyNet that might one day breed a sentient AI that kills us all once we’ve built enough robots for it (or figures out a way to make them on its own) while it develops secondary and tertiary processes to sustain itself should we cut the power or black out the sun’s natural rays? Maybe.
@incredibilistic If your comment wasn’t a dry tongue-in-cheek response to some of this hyperactive paranoia, I’m astonished that you have a computer and Internet connection at all. John Connor went wholly off the grid in Terminator 3, but somehow the robots found him anyway.
@incredibilistic – That was a perfect response that seems to encapsulate the feelings of those that have answered me thus far on this topic. Lol
Do you actually live in Clarence? I’m not too far away in the south towns :~)
I live on the border of Amherst and Clarence. Born and raised here. :)
Cool I love in south buffalo
So Google’s storage is free and Apple’s is expensive. However, Apple is using far more renewable energy to run it’s servers. It might not be cheap but it’s the right choice for our environment.
What balderdash. “renewable energy,” and “better for environment?” get real. You are making an emotional argument. One that is pock marked with inconstancies, and in some cases outright lies. Fanboi logic, nothing more.
LOL, right wing ideologue. Shouldn’t you be off strangling some puppies somewhere?
Take your medication, man.
I agree that apple should make unlimited photo storage free. Why don’t they learn from their past mistakes with MobileMe and charging for system updates?
But the cost is less important than the reliability. iCloud (and Apple maps) should just work all the time and in fact it doesn’t so for me, the most important piece of this is reliability, then cost. Apple is losing out to google on both fronts.
> unlimited photo storage free
No such thing as FREE. So tired of people who think they owed this or that.
I don’t think I’m owed anything. Apple used to charge for Mobile Me. When they moved to iCloud they made the service free (although not completely reliable). Apple used to charge for System updates. Now those updates are free.
I don’t feel I’m owed anything except reliability. If Apple is going to offer a service, free or not, it should work as flawlessly as all of their products. In fact, iCloud doesn’t.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. You are paying for it somewhere else. Also think of the people may or may not want their photo on Google’s services given their perceived lack of privacy. Some people don’t want their nude pics searchable with a simple google. The TOS is a POS.
Yea I like letting the “evil empire” have MORE control of my data, than it’s already stolen.
No Thanks.
So you don’t like “evil empire” Capitalism and from your screen name you obviously hate Socialism even though you live in a Socialist Republic (if you live in America)…what do you like? Nihilism?
You should ask your family and friends first. Because you’re allowing google to take all of your pictures and catalog them to sell to advertisers.
200GB for $4 a month is a price that “sounds crazy”? LOL wow. It’s the cost of a tall latte, give me a break. So what if the others are free, they are making money off the metadata, which Apple can’t do given their privacy policy. That being said, how can you think iCloud photo storage is expensive?? Thousands of dollars of Apple hardware and a couple bucks a month is a big deal now…what a funny world.
As the article said, $50 a year for 200GB of storage sounds crazy compared to Yahoo’s prior offer of $25 a year for 1TB of storage, and current offer of $0 a year for 1TB of storage. That’s how.
I’m on board with this article….Apple really needs to step up its photo/video storage game or iCloud Photo Library will slowly but surely start to lose to Google Photos.
Apple has the hardware advantage but man have they been letting the software go to crap particularly in the web services department.
As others have noted, there’s no such thing as FREE. If you aren’t PAYING for the product then YOU are the product. If people wish to give Google (or Yahoo) access to their entire photo library in order to save a few bucks in exchange for the inevitable privacy and advertising intrusions then more power to them! But from a FEATURE perspective I think it’s inaccurate and misleading to equate iCloud Photo Library with Google Photos or Flickr. All three offer cloud storage for photos accessible from all one’s devices. But what differentiates iCloud Photo Library is that in addition to that it also seamlessly syncs PHOTO EDITS across one’s devices. I’ve yet to see anything mentioned in the description of Google Photos or Flickr that would give me the impression that they offer this functionality. Hence, I can see an issue with different “versions” of a given photo depending upon the device one is using. Just saying ….
Google Photos DOES sync your photo edits. I just double checked to make sure. I applied cropping, color adjustments, and vignette. It was synced to my phone before I could even get to the picture.
Congrats!
Now your photos are processed, analyzed, indexed, and linked to your personal account by Google. Forever.
I uploaded my photo library from my iPad and disabled iCloud, saved 2.4 GB on an 16GB ipad Air, which is a lot considering how little room I have, 11.2 GB free after the OS.
Everyone that is complaining about your photos are being scanned, please be quiet.
Do you Google things?
Do you have a Gmail account?
Do you post photos to Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? SnapChat?
I don’t care who you are you information is already out there via your internet service provider.
Please be quiet and comply.
Aperture was great, Photos sucks. Still, i prefer to have the privacy Apple ensure, rather then having a “free” google service that will actually give this company huge amount of private information.
Meh. The only thing I use Google for is search (and I’m looking to find something better). I don’t trust them with my email, and I damn sure won’t trust them with my photos. Offering this service for free means that they have a way to profit off of doing so. I’ll stick with Photos on my Mac, and use iCloud. I think it’s stupid to just jump on Google’s service as if it’s the best thing ever without thinking about the consequences.
Which are?
The consequences? For one thing, you’re not a customer. You’re the product. Your photos are used to find ways to market to you. Your privacy just goes out the door. If you don’t care about these things, go ahead and sign up. Unlike the Google fans I’m not a cheap bastard. I happily pay for services and for my privacy.
Wait a minute Howie… You know that you are GOING to see ads anyway… Right? Are you saying you don’t want targeted ads? You’d rather them be random? I would actually PREFER the ads be something that I find interesting.
And if you’re using an ad-blocker of some kind, you won’t see them anyway.
All these anti-Google folks don’t sound like people who value privacy. They just sound paranoid.
Photos for iOS is a very cool and clever app, it has maps positioning, facial recognition on Mac, sharing/ editing features. Google just copied it. Even the User Interface. But where google really shined is that free unlimited storage. Of course free is a tought pill to swallow, but i think if Pages/Numbers and Mavericks could become free, so can storage. I gave 4000$ to apple last year, on hardware. I think it’s enough to get me some “free” storage.
Whats the fastest way to get 14000 pictures from Mac to Google Photos?
Google it. Also look up “cheap bastard”, “idiot”, “privacy”. Get my point?
At last we can gift rid of Apple awkward solutions by trnanfering photos with Image Capture instead of iPhoto. Then work your pics with Picasa. And store on google photo.
What are you talking about? Every iPhone user is happy with the new Photos app which looks and works better and does more.
I agree, this is just sensationalism over nothing. Free storage? Big deal, is this really all about $4 a month now??? That’s silly.
I’ve been using iPhoto and Aperture for years as a semi-pro photographer who doesn’t believe in Photoshop (because I believe in taking a better picture than sitting and processing for hours later) and I find the new Photos app really nice. I have found no problem with it and it’s a much better experience than either iPhoto and Aperture. I’m biased because I prefer fewer post features mainly because I think that only makes photographers lazy and be worse at their craft.
Google photos looks a lot like Apple’s new Photos app from all the screens I’ve seen, haven’t tried it yet though. But in general it seems like everyone is all giddy over the free part, which is funny to me given I pay $48 a year for 200GB or something while using my $2000 computer lol.
It’s us Aperture users that are unhappy, it’s a downgrade and Adobe is no answer, as it’s not available as a download from Apps, which limits your usability.
The new Photos app is okay, but the problem a lot of people have is Apple discontinuing iPhoto, which was an excellent app with vastly more functionality than Photos.
I just saw the video on the Verge and it says there that the unlimited is only available for compressed photos. For uncompressed you need to use Google Drive, so surely that’s not really that much better than the Apple offering?
I believe it’s upto 16MP for free storage.
From the Google Support Page:
Frequently asked questions
What should I choose if I take photos with my phone?
Most phone cameras are less than 16 megapixels (like iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy phones), so most stored photos will ***essentially*** look the same if you choose High quality.
I’ve put *** around the word essentially for emphasis.
A fair review(opinion)
I couldn’t agree more. Not only did Apple change everything, they didn’t tell anyone they did, including their own developers of Mail. Mail still thinks that iPhoto is the go-to app to download pictures to. Last year when IOS went to Photos many of the internet based blog softwares apps could access pictures either. I’m still not sure if Blogger (Google) has been rewritten to be able to get into the folders.
Photos is just absolutely clumsy, junky and difficult to use. I for the life of me can’t figure out why Apple does dumb stuff like this.
So it is Apple’s fault that nearly a year later, third party Apps haven’t made the switch over?
Free seems a little misleading. Google re-compresses the images down unless you pay. While that may not seem like a big deal at first glance, if pictures are important to you, this is a big no no as everytime you re-compress, the image gets a little worse in quality. Apple does not do this.
I move my Photos from my iPhone to my mac on a regular basis. How do I now get them from my mac to Google’s new Photos?
Well I may not “love” Photos but I am pretty happy with it. The transition went well and the learning curve was low. The editing tools are better than iPhoto. I find the program very very easy to use, now. And fast. I spend $4/month to store 75 GB of photos and 75 GB of family video from 1985. All available in the cloud. And now available on Apple TV without having to have my iPhoto library or iTunes open on my computer. Google and Flickr are great. Apple provides the simple elegant experience that works, and charges a premium like they always have. For $4/month, I’ll pay.
Here is what I learned?
1. I was very excited when Google launched it and signed up right after when it was available.
2. Uploaded all my 500 pictures.
3. I current use photo app on Mac and iOS. And back up on one drive with my office subscription. Unlimited storage.
4. Problem: you may not see the quality difference but any text picture is clearly bad. I compared the same text picture with one drive. I can max zoom in clearly read the text. But not on photo.
5. Yet, it does not auto upload on iOS. App must be open.
I think it is really good considering it’s free but not good at the level of one drive. I use lots of text files firmly school. I removed all pictures.
Here is my take as a serious hobby photographer.
1. All of my DSLR shots are processed through Lightroom. I have onsite, offsite (Crashplan) and downrezzed (Flickr) backups of my 1 TB Lightroom library. Any “real” photographer will.
However… I still use my iPhone for fun family photos for Facebook, etc. which brings me to:
2. For “light” photography Photos was a huge step up. I pay monthly to have all of my iPhone photos backed up… and it works reliably and has instant sync across all of my Apple devices. Very cool, can’t complain.
2. Amazon Prime has free unlimited photo storage… so I back up my iPhone there too.
3. As of today I backup iPhone to Google as well. Why not?
Here is my point: If you are serious about the photos you take hen you will use the right tools to deal with them. Lightroom and REAL offsite backup (Crashplan, Backblaze, etc) are real tools for serious photographers. Use them.
If you just want to make sure your memories aren’t lost… then use as many other “free” or cheap services as you can to back them up.
I don’t really see the big deal myself. Apple left the professional photography market because its product simply couldn’t compete (Lightroom is awesome). What it has now in Photos is perfect for most people. Anyone wanting/needing more should go out and get proper tools instead of trying to shoehorn consumer tools into a semi-pro situation.
I obviously can’t count tonight. Sorry about that! :-)
Every time Google comes out with their version of an app, some one has to come out about how good it is. You can’t buy into google they drop or poorly support everything. hello Google wave, reader, wallet.. This photos app will go the same way when they move on to other things they are not in the market to make good useable products for life they are just casting a catch net for all data they can
But Google is famous for starting over or just giving up on stuff. I wouldn’t trust Google as my main library at all. I use them as a backup. Also, please read the license agreement closely. It may change your mind.
How can I import my apple photos library on a mac? I installed the client and I chose the picture folder (https://photos.google.com/apps), but although the whole apple photo library is there, it can’t be imported.
But these are the basics…..what should I do?
$20/month (apple) is a bad deal and $99/month (google) is a good deal? What is it that I don’t get?
(Just tested it yesterday: On the free plan every image gets compressed to 85%… and after 400GB it just stopped accepting uploads.)
I’ll stick with S3.
Are we meant to believe that you uploaded 400GB of photos yesterday? What kind of Internet connection do you have? And how do we know it wasn’t your service provider throttling you?
Despite the title of this article, details about photo “libraries” on OSX is surprisingly omitted. The Google Downloader app specifically mentions iPhoto Library but not Photos Library. No mention of how the app handles duplicates either. You can read more about that in the Apple Discussion Forum thread entitled “Re: Google Photos (Desktop Uploader) and Photos for Mac?” http://apple.cp.1G9pKSt
Sharing photos in Google+ (and Google Photos, as they’re the same service) is pretty clunky though, As the owner of a set of photos, I can get to my albums with a few clicks, but for someone who wishes to look at an album or photo which has been shared with them, they have to trawl through their G+ feed or keep a copy of the URL somewhere.
By comparison a shared an album in iOS photos is always available instantly in the shared section of the Photos app. It’s a much nicer solution than Google’s offering.
On the storage side, of course, there’s simply no comparison and Apple desperately need to catch up.
Hi it’s a little misleading to say that users can ditch iPhoto for GP. i just tried gp and if I understood it correctly, it does not store photos locally on the Mac so it can’t really replace iPhoto for photo storage, correct? It’s a great online photo backup and sync service. The actual photos would still have to be stored somewhere on the Mac, either in iPhoto or just sit in the folders. There’s no Google Photos App for Mac OS (only on iOS), as you do everything over the browser. So what happens if I don’t have internet and want to view my photos on the Mac? I still have to use the stupid iPhoto, wouldn’t I?
I’m ecstatic about unlimited photo/video storage offered by Google. I’m hoping Apple would follow suit and improve upon Google. After using it for the afternoon, I find that Google photos interface leaves much to be desired.
I very much agree with this article. Photos has been a disappointment and a step backward, it’s certainly not any better than iPhotos. I hope Apple improves it quickly!
Ad you think Google is offering something better?
Useless – and all the synonyms I can think of. That’s what Google Photo is. It’s simply unbelievable that a rich company like Google can come up with something this…useless. Wait – there are two features I like:
1. Photos can be viewed to fill the screen
2. Unlimited free storage, albeit with limited file sizes
As a backup service it’s of no use to me because all the photos are simply uploaded in a stream. It’s not stored in my computer’s file structure, so recovering files will be nay impossible. I’d much rather pay someone a fee and have the ability to recover files the “proper” way – ala Time Machine.
Organizing photos is a royal pain. Something I started and then abandoned when I realized it’s essentially impossible to work with. Uploading files is easy, but then I have to manually add files to Collections. I have about 250 folders (Collections) containing a total of over 25,000 photos and there’s no way I’m going to upload those folders/collections one-by-one. Why can’t it mimic my file structure and automatically create Collections?
Can’t sort photos? Can’t select cover photos? Basically you can’t do anything. Stupid.
Sharing collections? Difficult because you have to produce a link for each collection. People I shared it with can’t buy photos, etc. So many things other photo sharing sites provide that are missing from Google Photo. Dumb.
Google has lost touch with its users and think that providing unlimited, free backup of photos will win over users. Wrong! We’re not that stupid! Sorry but Apple is miles ahead of you.
iPhoto was in fact hopeless and completely broken. It needed to be completely scrapped. It was one of the worst products I’ve seen come from Apple. It was unusable.
I hadn’t used iPhoto since switching to Aperture but it was a pretty good photo app when I did. What didn’t you like about it?
On first glance, Google Photos seemed like a dream come true, but after uploading photos all day yesterday I am ready to chuck the whole thing…
The ONE thing I need the program to do is be able to sort my photos by date, but a great number of them are losing their metadata during upload and now have only the upload date. I see other people mentioning the same problem, but am frankly surprised there isn’t more outrage. This makes the program virtually worthless to me….
WWDC 2015 is the time for Apple to right the wrongs with the abysmal Photos app for Mac.. I understand that it has only been released for 2 months but remember that they have been working on it for more than a year.. the result of all that work is really disappointing for now..
Core Image session in the WWDC calendar will be a big point to look out for.. hopefully they announce great things for Photos in the main Keynote.. I don’t mind them charging for cloud storage but for photo storage, maybe unlimited free storage for any resolution would be great (even RAW)..and that is not wishful thinking.. Apple has all the money to do that and keep their users in the ecosystem rather than have them leave to another company.. A Raw image is a lot smaller than a 1080p vdeo file.
December 8 will be a big opportunity for Apple or it will be a crappy Apple Watch fest.. wait and see.
Don’t hold your breath. Photos is great for its ability to store and sync your photos and videos across devices while conserving local storage space. But as a replacement for Aperture it’s a total joke. based on what I’ve seen, and the pace of development at Apple, it would take them 3-5 years to even approach the functionality of Aperture, assuming they intended to do so. It’s clear from their silence that they have no interest in the pro- or prosumer photo market.
maybe the silence is to allow for extensive testing of features without users questioning every feature decision before it’s even released… Personally, if WWDC 2015 is disappointing, I will start looking elsewhere for my Photo editing needs (Capture One seems to be a great option).
Well I loved google photos before they messed with it, removed some really cool filters and swapped them for 4 sliders and some instagram style retro “1970’s” style filters. What a real shame. Why do they do that? Why can they not add to the features instead of taking great ones away. “Drama” has been replaced with “Pop” which does nothing more than just saturate the image. Terrible.
Tried the new Google Photos and came away impressed. At first I was concerned about the compression but found that image quality is basically unaffected in most viewing environments. The best feature by far is its ability to organize photos by image content. Amazing.
The main issue I have is that you cannot select which images to upload from the desktop (Mac). I have many photos in my Aperture library that I do not want backed up. There is no way to select them from within Aperture as you can with Flickr, Facebook, etc. I will go feet first with Google Photos once that capability is implemented, simply due to the AI organizing feature.
My reluctance to use Google Photos as my primary storage stems from two issues: (1) all photos and videos are recompressed in the free “high quality” version (those under 16Mpix and 1080p are compressed less, but the uploaded file still differs from the original), and (2) it can’t sync nondestructive edits.
“After abruptly announcing the discontinuation of iPhoto and Aperture, Apple effectively told professionals to switch to Adobe’s Lightroom…”
In case you weren’t aware, that ship sailed years ago. Sure there are a few pros using Aperture but the vast majority (>90%) use LR even before Apple decided to drop Aperture.
The few surveys I’ve seen on the LR vs Aperture topic didn’t suggest anything close to a 90/10% split before Aperture was killed. In any case, always remember: “Apple (says it) doesn’t care about market share.”
This is the ultimate step for Google to know everything about your life. Google is going to analyze each single one of your photo, then will know who are your friends, what kind of soda you drink, where you go for holidays, etc.
NO WAY. I won’t give them my life even for free.
In my opinion photos is a great new app. What Apple need to do now is giving much more storage in the cloud without any fees … perhaps unlimited. But please: Keep photo data private. Therefore google is no option for me. I will not pay with my data.
I might pay the $ for iCloud Photo Library if it worked better with the family accounts they rolled out. I switched my family over to family accounts and now getting photos into one library is a real pain.
Love the free syncing service, BUT:
1. just found out that Google Photo’s website does NOT support retina display on the Mac. Images are poor when viewed from my retina mbp. (it does support retina on phones). You’ve gotta be kidding me.
2. It is NOT a program for your computer. The app only exists for Mobile devices. You can’t put GP in your application folder, as you do everything via your browser. So please stop saying switching from iPhoto/Photo to GP. It’s not even possible because GP is purely web-based – no local storage on your mac.
As far as cloud storage of my photo’s, I’ve decided to go the route of dropbox since that is the same place I put all my other valuable files. I also keep hard back ups and I have started to use Amazon’s Cloud drive since they started to offer unlimited photo storage as well. I say use what you are comfortable with. BTW, I’m still using Aperture until I have to move to something else. I payed for the software I might as well get my use out of it till the end, lol
Apple’s Photo is much better. No way to edit faces when Google gets them wrong, which they already have. No way to edit auto labels when Google gets them wrong and they are getting them very wrong. And they removed the somewhat better editing tools. And when you share, you can only share a link. That sucks bad.
In fairness, you still need to pay for Google storage if you don’t want reduced quality images. However, their storage is much less expensive then iCloud.
Not me. So if I back my files up on my Mac then put the google Photos app on my phone it attempts to back them up again so I get duplicates. Which sucks because my Iphone is optimized for photos and my Mac has the Hi Res originals for some of my Photos.
We are comparing apps features and service advantages between two apps/services; that’s all.
With that being said, i’ll wait for WWDC to hear what Apple has to say, and then make my decision.
A Macbook, an iPhone and an iPad with photos backed up in a Google service? It doesn’t seem right to me either, but this is the tech world/war we live in.
Have you looked at Carousel by Dropbox?
Sometimes I think the author should take a wait and see approach in private before hand to let the dust settle before we start making assumptions about if Google’s app is better than Apple’s app. Apple has been doing the photos thing for quite sometime now. I’d really wait and see after people have tried it before I go outside the ecosystem to use the Google’s photos app.
Additionally, I didn’t see anything that functionally mentioned in the article that one could reasonably use to justify a switch to Google’s photos app.
It reads like someone is complaining about Apple re-did their app without consulting them first…. I mean really…. Who is this person that Apple should consult before doing something they feel they need to do? Google does the same thing and with less notification that Apple.
The Google Graveyard is littered with failed apps and products that Google has had to kill off over the years because they failed outright or Google’s priorities changed.
I think this really is a case of… you get what you pay for. When I pay for something i can reasonably hold Apple to a minimum SLA. With Google, I don’t have that same leverage as per the agreement you have to make with them before being allowed to access the Google photos service.
Terms of service:
When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. This license continues even if you stop using our Services
Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
Plus, even < 16m photos are recompresed, and no web is not retina compatible.
No, no, no.
Dropbox, flirkr, apple, etc etc all of them protect your content
@Jeremy (and everyone with a photo library larger than, say, 100Gb: before you decide to upload your library to Google Photos, know that their app downloads the COMPLETE iCloud library to your iPad or iPhone…
I’m in the process of uploading my 15 years, 140 Gb., 26.000-photo-library to Google Photos, because I want to use BOTH iCloud Photos and Google Photos. That’s possible, because Google Photos appears to seamlessly integrate with iCloud Photos! That’s GREAT, because every adjustment I do in iCloud Photos, is transferred to Google Photos and vice versa! And for the first time I can now merge my wives library with mine: we’re both logged in into the same Google Photos account on our iOS devices. Only in Google Photos we want to maintain a merged version, so our iCloud Photo Libraries maintain separate. We can now cherry picking the good photos from both our libraries, without messing up our iCloud Photo Library. Great!
BUT…. Even with my iCloud Photo Library size-setting, set to “Optimize for iPad”, my 128 Gb. iPad starts complaining to have no space available anymore. It appears Google Photos is forcing iCloud Photos to download every single photo on my iPad, resulting in taking up 45 Gb.. And I’ve only uploaded 8.000 of the 26.000 photos!
What I don’t know yet (and what I hope), is if this is a temporary matter: Google Photos needing to download the photos before being able to upload them to Google. I hope that the app will release the photos after uploading them to google… but I still see no sign of that happening…
I personnaly use my NAS (2TB) to sync all my personal data. you pay 200$ once and it’s done.
I pay only 3 euro per month for a huge amount of iCloud storage and I like Photos and the way it is integrated between Mac, iPhone and iPad very much.
Especially the way you can edit and apply 3rd party filters nondestructively (Pixelmator, Afterlight and Flare Effects are brilliant).
My gripe with Google is that I have about 5 different accounts and Google is constantly trying to unify them for me, generating one big mess.
My main problem with Photos is that the interface is still in its infancy.
Nevertheless, all the rationalizations put apart, the main reason why I choose Apple is probably that it *feels* more closed, and safe.
I’m resonably impressed with Google Photos so far, but don’t look at the “unlimited storage feature” and think “great! I can now backup all my videos and photos for free!” It’s NOT a backup solution as Google compresses your photos and videos, no matter how many MP’s they are. I don’t think Google doing enough to make people aware of that and the desktop application is actually called “Google Photos Backup”.
The face detection feature is also not available everywhere. I was looking for it, searched their help/documentation and eventually found a “face detection is not available in all countries” message but not further explanation. It would be nice to know the reason and where it actually is available.
I’m so far NOT impressed with the desktop application. I set it to upload/sync 7000-8000 images a couple of days ago on my rMBP and while my laptop certainly hasn’t been on 24/7, it’s been on for many hours and progress is quite slow. It still have more than 6000 images to upload and I frequently get an error message telling me that it failed to upload some images.
Apple’s service might not be as advanced as Google’s but I rather trust Apple with my images than Google. If you don’t care about your private data being sold, sure go ahead. Otherwise, avoid Google.
yes, free = good ; – )
isn’t there some “we can use your stuff for what ever we want…” policy written very small somewhere?
(same for flickr “Oh, 1TB of >free< storage…)
Yes. See section heading “Your content in our services”
When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/
I hate all of this Google V. Apple BS. So, for me, the app that gets my vote (and business) is the one that works best for me.
For me, that is not Google Photo. Why? Simple, they refuse to allow me to create sub folders. Sub folders do not work for everyone – and I don’t care what works for you. For ME, sub folders work best – and I wish apps would stop trying to put all of my pictures in one lump pile – or, at best, one folder.
For now, I will stick with Amazon. They let me organize MY way.
Just my 2 cents.
I’d like Google Photos to completely replace my camera roll. How do I set it up to delete local photos after an upload?
I’m super confused by all the hate that google gets for its privacy when their whole business is based upon it. If they ever screwed up privacy like some suggest their company would be over. Its fud to think they are going to take your actual photos and sell them to a third party that’s just not true at all. Its a great tag line to spout when you don’t have a valid argument but in reality if google fails us at privacy the business would fail also. Secondly they are not just going to sell your photos and then in a commercial your going to say wow that’s my photo! Its not going to happen so stop with the fud.
Just like someone else mentioned every company is data mining and I’d be more worried about the company’s that aren’t up front about it. Anytime you use your credit card, go through toll booths, use anything but cash you ate being data mined and I’m sure everyone does this daily so why google gets so much grief over it is hard to understand. Let’s not sit here and make stories up that have not factual basis like google selling your actual photos without you knowledge its not going to happen because if it does google as a business would fail and they know that
I use Flickr. 1TB of storage uploaded from old iPhoto libraries, iPhones, iPads, folders on multiple machines. All of my photos (40,000+) are all in one place now at 10% of the available storage.
Is there a way to upload images directly from iPhoto and Aperture libraries? Do you have to export your photos from those libraries to a folder on your desktop and THEN upload them to Google? Also – I have many photos arranged in albums that I wish to retain. Is this possible? What is the difference between the Google Backup app and this new service?
On the Mac I discovered that you can drag and drop selected photos directly from Aperture or from your hard drive. Works great for selective uploads.
I should have stated drag and drop is into the web site. Not using the uploader.
I think I just answered my own question. On my iMac with Google photos in my browser, I clicked on Upload. A dropdown menu appeared and on the left side, there were options to choose Media>Photos or Movies. I chose Photos and then it showed Aperture and iPhoto. I chose Aperture. I got a message saying that it is accessing my Aperture library (which is extensive) so it is taking a long time. But this is probably what I was asking about.
Either your hard drive or the service you use will fail you. Over time technologies change, services go under or your device dies. Jusr make sure to hedge your bets. Use different services especially if like Google, are “free” and try and keep up with whatever trends. Just ay it safe if your images mean a lot to you.
How can I automagically upload all my existing photos from Photos/Iphoto, and also all coming photos in my Photos library. I can’t add my Photos library folder/package. Anyone did this?
Find your photo library by looking in Photos preferences. Then point the uploader to this file (it’s actually a folder!). The photos will then start uploading all your existing photos. New ones will also upload when you sync your phone with your mac. You can also upload automatically from the phone with Google photos.
Above all stated, the new tradition at apple seems to be to take good user interface and destroy it with a full makeover. Then shove the garbage new look at us pretending it’s better, easier and intuitive when it’s not ( like the iMovie ios and macosx, or FCP timeline nonsense)
I can’t believe the “new” photos app wasn’t created by a blind monkey at a typewriter, because it’s just that crappy.
Make me have to scroll swipe and navigate to find even the smallest bit of metadata, when a single button “I” used to do it. Forget that it used to be nice to calculate file or format sizes, why would anyone care to use such email considerations??
Make me do multiple swipes and touches to find out the location or date it was taken. Again, who cares about such things in a “who cares, just shoot a ton” world of pretend photographers??
And by all means make buttons as close to off white on pure white as possible, we would like to be forced into giving up using your apps in frustration. (IE: like the back button to return to Music in the Loops menu of GarageBand)
Photos app is all this and more in one. Forget Apple responding to “suggestions” on the feedback link, it’s gone on for so many updates now they obviously don’t care, and have switched to the “now charge them for crap” model.
Hi, a way to circumvent some of the problems of Photos app is our app Utiful, which complements Photos in a great, unexpected manner.
Photos is quite ghastly: a frustratingly slow and inefficient way to import and store pix from my cameras.
iPhoto was sleek and – on my MacBook Pro 13″ – fast.
But most importantly, file storage was so easy – name the album, move pix into it, and snap: done.
And I so miss swiping albums to see what’s inside.
I could go on but won’t – Apple has divorced me on this one. Just as well I didn’t go over to Aperture.
Hi, interesting that you mention swiping through albums. We’ve implemented such a feature in our app Utiful, which is a great, unexpected complement to the Photos app. You can use Utiful to move photos out of the Camera Roll to Utiful folders. The folders work just as folders should, not like Apple’s “albums” that are interlinked with the Camera Roll. You can swipe left/right through the Utiful folders too.
The one feature that really turns me off to Google Photos is that you can not rotate multiple photos but need to rotate each one separately – one by one. Until they fix this, I find it impossible to use.
I totally agree and …. soooo how do we “move” our “iphoto” or “photos” library to Google? Detailed instructions if you please!?
Google uses your photos to enhance their dossier on you. Anyone that uses this ‘free’ service is crazy.
Strongly agree. Everyone’s really concerned about privacy but do they realize they have given up privacy (long ago) for using free services…
What is WWDC