ICloud was let loose in 2011 and has never been fit for purpose. Some comments here are from hackernews veterans, with 1000s of kudos points, presumably with tech wings, talking about their yearly struggles with photo sync fails - why on earth are you using iCloud to sync photos when it's never been fit for purpose?
> why on earth are you using iCloud to sync photos
Some reasons for me personally:
- It works well enough. I rarely have issues (maybe once a year as you say?), and then it’s usually resolved by a device reboot. Once I had to turn iCloud sync on and off again. However, I’ve learned to avoid e.g. working on Git repos in iCloud Drive, which tends to upset the sync process.
- It’s cheap. I can get 200GB storage shared with family for €3.5/month. For example Dropbox doesn’t sell less than 2TB plans, which with family sharing becomes €17/month. That’s 5x more.
- It is the best alternative on iOS. I tried lots of other sync apps before I migrated to iCloud. Partly, this is because Apple has crippled the competition by not allowing them to sync in the background without battery-draining hacks, not allowing them to integrate directly with the Photos app, etc. Partly it is because the other cloud providers I tried didn’t integrate properly with e.g. the Files API.
Thank you. For my non-technical friends of all ages iPhoto to Photos went through such seismic changes that for most coherence of how and where photos were and weren't was taxing. Not sure on the pricing point though - with the vast majority of iPhone users clicking away, the phone limit is reached quickly and then getting a non-tech head around photos actually are is never ending. But yes, I'm sure things have improved, they would have to.
Thank you, although, after reading the Eclectic Light article I get the impression the resolution continues. My experience with iTunes match and iOS to Mac sync'ing means I left iCloud sync for serious usage prior. Too many times Apple launch untested services on us long term Apple hardware users. Music industry. I concede things have improved, but they would, wouldn't they - and couldn't (stand to) be any worse.
