|
| qrbLPHiKpiux wrote:
| How about just letting me be able to plug my phone into any
| laptop and drag and drop my pictures?
| djrogers wrote:
| You mean like has been possible since the first iPhone? Or am I
| missing something here - I plug in my iPhone and open the same
| Image Capture utility that I'd use with any other camera (or SD
| Card) and import my photos.
| JAKWAI wrote:
| Increasing the UX of a product never seems to be a mistake. And
| of course switching to another device is also part of the User
| Experience.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I migrated away from Google Cloud storage this year given their
| announcement. The Microsoft office 365 family deal made at more
| sense. I can't see myself using Google cloud storage in the
| future given the premium they're charging. Moving the data wasn't
| that hard.
| izacus wrote:
| "Premium" being 2.5$ a month for 200GB of storage space?
| Alupis wrote:
| Well, in fairness, Microsoft's Office365 subscriptions
| conveniently include 1TB of OneDrive storage. So, if you
| already need the other Microsoft Office apps, and are already
| going to pay for them, you essentially get 1TB of cloud
| storage "for free".
| londons_explore wrote:
| Bundling a spreadsheet app with photo storage ought to be
| against some competition rule... Just like Amazon has taken
| over so many markets with Prime...
| LegitShady wrote:
| It's not photo storage it's general cloud storage. And
| it's not a spreadsheet app it's the an office suite.
|
| It's a much better deal than Google's cloud storage. That
| excel kicks the pants off Google sheets is just a bonus.
| gruez wrote:
| Disagree. As Steve job puts it: dropbox (and cloud
| storage in general) is "a feature and not a product".
| Alupis wrote:
| While I agree it shouldn't be against some law or
| anything - we'd be kidding ourselves if we didn't assume
| this was a calculated move to edge people into Office365
| vs. GSuite/LibreOffice + DropBox, etc...
|
| 1TB is huge, and nobody can compete with that "for free"
| right now. Although, as a heavy OneDrive user, I'll tell
| you it's not nearly as good of a product as DropBox or
| even Google Drive (in my limited experience with both).
|
| The name of the OneDrive folder cannot be changed, it
| limits how large of a file you can sync into it,
| routinely gets "stuck" syncing forever (requiring a hard
| reset of OneDrive), has rate limited downloads, etc. It's
| clearly an afterthought for Microsoft - probably because
| they give it away for free.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Microsoft charges less per user for 1tb and msoffice 365 if
| you can find 5 family members to share the family plan with.
|
| So yes if if an get it elsewhere for cheaper it's a price
| premium.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Still missing Google Photos as offloading service. Which seems
| blatantly illegal.
|
| p.s. I'd love to use iCloud if it wasn't so slow and buggy
| (watching old videos on Mac is basically a chore).
| mnutt wrote:
| I was surprised that Google's iOS app ignores iOS Photos' albums
| and favorites, and is practically the only app on my phone that
| doesn't allow me to share a picture into it from the
| camera/photos app.
|
| I went ahead and wrote my own app that provides the share
| extension and hooks up to the Google Photos API, but even with
| that I can't write photos to albums that weren't created by my
| app. It seems like Google _really_ doesn't want me to get photos
| into Google Photos for some reason?
| janaagaard wrote:
| > I was surprised that Google's iOS app ignores iOS Photos'
| albums and favorites.
|
| They recently made it possible to synchronize favorites between
| Google Photos and Apple Photos. Beware that turning this on
| resets the favorites you had made in Google Photos, keeping
| just the ones you have in Apple Photos, but once it has been
| turned on the synchronization seems to go both ways between the
| apps.
| dangwu wrote:
| The Google Photos iOS app just uploads all photos that my
| iPhone takes automatically, regardless of album. Yours doesn't?
| mnutt wrote:
| My iPhoto photo set is much, much larger than Google Photos
| storage cap; I just want to share a couple of photos with
| family. But yeah, that sort of explains it. They're pushing
| you to just store everything in Google Photos.
| treesknees wrote:
| This is something I miss from Android. I could tell Google
| Photos to ignore my downloads and screenshots albums, but iOS
| you either need to manually select photos to upload, or
| upload all photos.
| sdljfjafsd wrote:
| The issue is you have an existing photo in your iCloud that
| is not in your camera roll (which is something iOS can
| automatically do so many people have this use case) there was
| no easy way to transfer those photos to Google.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > Only the most recent edit of the photo is transferred and not
| the original version. Duplicates appear as just one photo.
|
| This is actually a dealbreaker. When I edit a photo, I expect the
| service to store both the original and the edited version, so
| that I can revert the edit or just look at the original version
| straight from the camera at any time. I have actually went back
| and looked at old edited photos I took, and found the edits to be
| way too heavy handed (too much contrast, too much saturation,
| etc) than I'd prefer today. One's taste as a photographer grows
| and changes.
| subpixel wrote:
| Funny reading this while Apple re-uploads my entire 10+ year
| photo library _from an external drive_ back to iCloud after I
| fresh-installed Big Sur.
| ftio wrote:
| Protip: go the other direction. I've found that re-downloading
| the whole thing into a new library is >10x faster than
| resyncing your local 'originals' with iCloud. I have no idea
| why this is, but I've done the 'download' method twice, and it
| has been so much faster and more reliable (and less stressful).
| soheil wrote:
| This is great I wish they'd give an option to just download all
| your photos as a zip file.
| sdfjkl wrote:
| My photos are on my drive in a bunch of messy folders and I can
| transfer them wherever I want. Get your filthy clouds off my
| lawn.
| owaislone wrote:
| I so want to go back to this but after losing two of my 2 TB
| drives got corrupted in the past 15 years and now I'm scared of
| leaving everything on a drive. Perhaps a cheap S3 deep archive
| storage + a physical drive as main storage is the answer but
| then I won't have an app like Google Photos which is actually
| pretty great especially for sharing with family.
| jrullman wrote:
| Part of the Data Transfer Project?
| https://datatransferproject.dev/
| s1k3s wrote:
| Also, wasn't this mandatory in EU? Something related to GDPR?
| hkh28 wrote:
| Yes, data portability is a requirement in the GDPR. You
| should not be locked in to a service just because they have
| your data.
| sircastor wrote:
| Portability, yes, but does it require portability to
| another specific service? I understand being able to get
| your data out of a platform, but I don't see a requirement
| that a given entity provide explicit transfer to another.
| codys wrote:
| While it's good that this is finally being provided, it's still
| somewhat amazing that there isn't any documented API to interact
| with iCloud.
|
| One can of course, on Apple hardware, use apple proprietary APIs
| to do some things. Or one can use the iCloudJs stuff from a
| webpage.
|
| But there's not an official/documented way to, say, write a
| program that runs on a Linux server to mirror photos in iCloud to
| disk (or access any other iCloud data).
|
| There are reverse engineered APIs that folks can use to interact
| with it, but the official iCloud story has been data lock in.
| grishka wrote:
| If they did have official APIs, that would mean that someone
| would eventually make use of them to make an Android client.
| And that would be absolutely unacceptable. /s
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Are you sure you meant to include that "/s"?
| jpdaigle wrote:
| Oh yes. I'd love to be able to hook up Google Assistant devices
| to my iCloud reminders lists, so that "remind me tomorrow to
| call the doctor" spoken to the Google Home would just nicely
| become an iOS reminder.
| rsync wrote:
| Does rclone[1] interface with iCloud Photos ? It works just fine
| with google photos[2] ...
|
| Without installing rclone and without using any of your own
| bandwidth, you should be able to: ssh
| user@rsync.net rclone icloud:/blah gphotos:/blah
|
| Or maybe you just want to keep a copy in your rsync.net account:
| ssh user@rsync.net rclone icloud:/blah /your/dir/tree
|
| [1] https://rclone.org
|
| [2] https://rclone.org/googlephotos/
| dkonofalski wrote:
| If they have a Mac, then yes. You can enable download of all
| full-resolution photos from iCloud to a Photos library which
| can be stored anywhere and is stored in a standard directory
| structure.
| jdxcode wrote:
| iCloud photos aren't just jpegs in a directory
| rsync wrote:
| Take a look at the rclone targets list:
|
| https://rclone.org/
|
| In fact, _most of them_ are not files in a directory - that
| 's what makes most of the rclone use-cases so impressive. If
| they can interact with gdrive/photos/S3/etc. they should be
| able to interact with iCloud Photos ...
| atdt wrote:
| Frustratingly, support for Google Photos in rclone is
| handicapped by the limitations of the Google Photos API: you
| can't download Photos at original resolution. This is
| documented on your second link.
| rsync wrote:
| That's unfortunate ... and I believe there are some other
| end-user ("consumer") products that also interfere with the
| direct mechanism that 'rclone' uses to request data.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > It works just fine with google photos
|
| Second line in your link:
|
| > NB The Google Photos API which rclone uses has quite a few
| limitations, so please read the limitations[0] section
| carefully to make sure it is suitable for your use.
|
| For anyone intending to use rclone to download their photos
| from Google Photos, be aware that you will lose EXIF data. If
| you download videos, they will be lower quality. There are more
| limitations in the link.
|
| [0] https://rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations
| jw14 wrote:
| When is google going to offer to transfer my photos to iCloud?
| I've done it using their export.. it was a nightmare. Dates
| aren't preserved.
| owaislone wrote:
| Unrelated but does anyone know if the partner sharing photos in
| Google Photos costs double the storage? I know I can view my
| partners photos in the app but there is a "save" feature which
| allows me to save my partners photos to my own "galley". Does
| that mean the photo counts towards my Google One storage twice? I
| think it doesn't but I'm not sure.
| donatzsky wrote:
| Pretty sure it only counts if you save them to your own
| library. Also, if you don't save them before turning off
| partner sharing, they'll disappear.
| modeitsch wrote:
| It's good that apple offers this but when you try to move your
| photos away from google photos It's hard like hell
| ransom_rs wrote:
| Isn't Google Takeout pretty easy?
| jjcon wrote:
| Google takeout rips out a lot of metadata information and
| virtually all organization you had - there are a couple open
| source projects trying to replace or augment gphotos takeout
| so it is useable but as is it isn't a viable option for large
| libraries
| graham1776 wrote:
| I have the reverse problem...I need to liberate my 600GB of
| photos from Dropbox into iCloud. Any reccomendations without
| downloading the entire thing to an external drive and re-
| uploading?
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| That's the last fucking place I want my photos.
|
| When you run out of space, you're screwed.
| dangwu wrote:
| If any Google Photos product people are here...
|
| Since you're ending free unlimited photo storage, I _badly_ want
| a feature that automatically finds all groupings of similar
| photos and deletes all but the best one (least blurry, most
| smiles, whatever you decide). Whenever I take photos, I tend to
| spam the shutter button, so I end up with 3+ photos of anything
| and everything. I could stay on Google Photos for many, many more
| years if I had this auto clean up capability.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| +1. Based on all the other cool search capabilities they have
| around recognizing your face/people's faces/objects, I'm
| surprised they don't have a "recognize duplicates" / "recognize
| bad pics" filter yet...especially when they know you have a
| bulk or automatic upload into your Photos account from your
| devices.
| lxgr wrote:
| I'd second that, or alternatively just a plan that lets me
| upload unlimited photos for a monthly fee like Flickr used to
| do very early on.
| nicoburns wrote:
| This exists. It uses you general google storage quota (shared
| with gmail, gdrive, etc).
| lxgr wrote:
| This is different, though: Flickr used to charge for the
| capability to upload, Google charges for keeping the photos
| available.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Ah I see. To be honest I feel like paying for storage
| capacity is a much more reasonable pricing model.
| lxgr wrote:
| It definitely is more reasonable for Google, and probably
| many users too.
|
| But I always liked the idea of never having to worry
| about storage space and was willing to pay a premium for
| it.
|
| I doubt that in the end I had more than 100 or 200
| Gigabyte stored there, so Google would be a better deal
| for me even as a fairly heavy user, but I'd be willing to
| pay that premium for peace of mind.
|
| If Backblaze can offer unlimited backup data for $6, I
| bet Google could make something similar work for a
| restricted domain like photos.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I find it a bit odd that an unlimited plan gives you
| peace of mind. An unlimited plan is never truly
| unlimited, and unlike a quota'd plan there is always a
| very real risk that you'll end up having the rug pulled
| out from under you.
|
| I pay PS2.49/month for 200GB which would cover your usage
| for cheaper. Or you can 2TB for PS7.99 which would mean
| you'd never have to think about storage.
| mywacaday wrote:
| Google will give you 2 TB a year for $99, gives me some
| confidence that it won't go away as easy.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Honestly, though, it's still a bad experience browsing other
| search-based tags and having to wade through all these dupes.
| I'd rather a clean way of just removing them at the source.
|
| Possibly a compromise could be an auto-collapse function
| where Photos shows it as a stack with the AI-proposed best
| pick on top, and an option to fan out and make your own
| judgment. That doesn't on its own fix the storage side, but
| it would be a small step from there to a one-click "trash
| everything from this stack other than the featured item.
|
| Apple _kind_ of does this with live photos, but it would be
| nice to have GPhotos able to figure it out as well after the
| fact, since we 've all been doing the "take many pics of it
| just in case" thing since forever.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > Possibly a compromise could be an auto-collapse function
| where Photos shows it as a stack with the AI-proposed best
| pick on top
|
| I could see this being done locally on a device and having
| a dis-or-dat style interface to quickly choose between
| competing photos.
| jcomis wrote:
| Or please allow me to re-upload previously uploaded "high
| quality" free photos to "original quality" once I pay. After
| years of being a paid customer I have still not found a way to
| do this.
| SamBam wrote:
| ...and if any are here let me add:
|
| Can we please please get a return of the Assistant-style
| creations? All that exists now is the Instagram Stories-style
| auto-playing albums. Does anyone actually like these better?
| aceazzameen wrote:
| You just reminded how the old Android camera app (maybe
| Samsung?) used to have a "best" mode. Snap some photos, review
| the best one(s) and only commit to saving your choices.
|
| It was something that could have probably used a UX refresh,
| but was instead removed entirely in future phones.
|
| I'd love if cloud services implemented something similar.
| elliottkember wrote:
| I don't know whether you're on iOS, but if you are, the app on
| the app store called "Gemini" has been a game-changer for me in
| this regard.
| amazon_throw wrote:
| Is this the one? https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gemini-photos-
| gallery-cleaner/...
|
| (There are a lot of "Gemini" bitcoin apps, apparently...)
| adrr wrote:
| Gemini is a great app. I wish apple photos or google photos
| had similar features. Even Lightroom needs it since 1/5 of my
| photos are out of focus.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I like the idea but I'm a bit put off by the new privacy
| tags on the App Store: this app uses product interaction,
| device ID and user ID track me? No thanks
|
| Off topic but I also hate the new trend of apps not telling
| you how much the full version costs until after you've
| installed it.
| Solocomplex wrote:
| Pixel motion photos Top Shot uses AI to do this.
| boatsie wrote:
| I wish this existed as well but with the added element of AI
| based merging where it can take the best in focus faces (eyes
| open and smiling) and composite them into a single image. Seems
| very possible but I haven't heard of an implementation.
| ronyeh wrote:
| Google Photos used to have this! It had a auto magic filter
| that combined multiple shots into a magic shot with no blinks
| and all smiles.
|
| Like most things from Google, the engineers and PMs on that
| feature got promoted and the feature eventually went away.
|
| It was called Auto Awesome:
|
| https://picasageeks.com/tag/combining-pictures-to-get-the-
| be...
|
| https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-trigger-the-Auto-Awesome-
| in-G...
|
| I had some great results from that feature, e.g. from big
| group shots at a party.
| jcims wrote:
| Lol two months ago I moved about 80GB of photos from iCloud to
| Google and it was an absolute nightmare. Nothing worked correctly
| through the entire collection.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Imagine a service which properly integrated your phone camera
| (such that messaging etc worked nicely) had a desktop app and
| allowed network storage and backup.
|
| Have I just missed this application?
| jcims wrote:
| Oh there's an application alright. Getting it to actually do
| its job is another matter entirely.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| I use iPhone + Apple's Photos app on MacOS for this, but I
| also include Dropbox for backing up directly from the phone
| and from any SD cards from other cameras. I also make a
| backup copy of Dropbox myself.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Is this all automatic (excluding the SD card bit)?
| jcims wrote:
| This didn't work for me on Windows for some reason. It
| would transfer a few photos then the phone would go out to
| lunch and I'd start getting device errors, application
| errors, etc.
| Rygian wrote:
| Seems to be a move in the right direction to be compliant with
| GDPR.
|
| Article 20 [1] gives me the right to have my personal data
| transmitted directly from one controller to another controller
| (where technically feasible).
|
| We should be seeing this kind of feature available in all
| services targeted at European citizens.
|
| [1] https://gdpr-text.com/read/article-20/
| GNU_James wrote:
| >Lets You Ye, no. I still spit on them.
| smoldesu wrote:
| For those of you wanting a way to get your photos out of Google,
| I recommend https://takeout.google.com
|
| I used it last week to migrate my Google photos to Nextcloud, it
| was pretty painless.
| tcit wrote:
| Nextcloud now has an app to migrate your Google data (files,
| photos, calendars and contacts) straight away.
| [deleted]
| philposting wrote:
| I used https://www.raidrive.com/ which lets you mount Google
| Photos as a (read-only) drive in Windows.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Word of caution - if you use Google Drive it will happily
| quickly dump as much as 200 GiB in your drive. if you don't
| have enough space, you get an incomplete download and five
| other Google services complaining you've run out of space.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Mine is 350+. I dumped it on a HDD and forgot about it, came
| back the next day and it wasn't done. For some reason I was
| being throttled, I restarted the download and it was fast
| again. They sure do have a lot of data on me :(
| sullysaas wrote:
| I have 992GB of photos stored in Google Photos and I desperately
| want something to transfer all of them FROM Google Photos to any
| other service.
|
| Google Takeout fails to export all of my photos..
| steren wrote:
| I have 400GB in Google Photos, and I am able to use Google
| Takeout to download them as multiple archives. I try to back
| them every 1/2 years on a hard drive.
|
| Since I assume you are a Google One user. Maybe contact support
| and share your issue?
| trimbo wrote:
| Does it actually miss data that should be there or does the
| Takeout fail?
| elcomet wrote:
| Did you try rclone ?
| moron4hire wrote:
| Aaaw, thanks Apple. You're a mensch.
|
| -_-
| varispeed wrote:
| They don't do any favour. They are supposed to allow it by law
| because of GDPR. If GDPR was not passed, I personally doubt Apple
| would do anything. They should allow export not only to Google
| Photos but also for yourself to download in a way that you could
| import it to any other photo storage service.
| chrisshroba wrote:
| How are they obligated by GDPR to support server side data
| transfer to Google in particular? My understanding is that they
| are only required to make it possible for you to download your
| data so that _you_ can upload it elsewhere if you 'd like to.
| varispeed wrote:
| https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
|
| The right to data portability allows individuals to obtain
| and reuse their personal data for their own purposes across
| different services.
|
| It allows them to move, copy or transfer personal data easily
| from one IT environment to another in a safe and secure way,
| without affecting its usability.
|
| It doesn't say that they have to implement moving from one
| provider to another without you having to download the data,
| but I think the key phrase is "easily from one IT environment
| to another in a safe and secure way, without affecting its
| usability".
| jedberg wrote:
| Is this to avoid some sort of monopoly accusation or the result
| of new data protection rules?
| dangwu wrote:
| It's part of https://datatransferproject.dev/
| [deleted]
| iso1631 wrote:
| So I could transfer from icloud to google then import into
| digikam. Interesting
|
| Why can't I just download a zip from icloud with my 13,000
| photos/videos inside? Where's the API?
| abhayhegde wrote:
| Mind you, Google's free plan gives only 15GB space. Purchasing
| larger space requires unnecessary monthly expense. Periodic
| backup to hard disks seems like the only permanent solution.
| treesknees wrote:
| Google's storage plans start at $19.99/year for 100GB. For less
| than a cup of coffee every month I'm able to back up my photos
| wherever I am, search across photos, share them easily with iOS
| and Android users, easily buy larger prints and photo books.
|
| Yes, there's the fact that Google scans photos. I personally
| find it really useful to search for an object or face in Google
| Photos that other services just don't do as well.
|
| >Periodic backup to hard disks seems like the only permanent
| solution
|
| Well of course that's true. Nothing will beat owning a physical
| copy of your files in terms of backups/reliability in the worst
| cases. But you can always do both. Upload to the cloud and
| perform periodic account takeouts of your photos and store them
| to disk.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Yes, because iCloud and Google Photos shouldn't be considered
| the only piece to a backup solution.
| m463 wrote:
| If they're a privacy company, they should just offer a dedicated
| home server for this sort of thing.
|
| personal icloud, with all the apple trimmings. It is ok to sell
| this to you and charge money.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| This article is a little weird. The title is actually "Transfer a
| copy of your iCloud Photos collection to _another service_ " but
| then the small print says "...to Google Photos."
|
| It seems like they plan to support migrating to other services at
| some point but not yet?
|
| It also only allows customers from a small fraction of countries
| to use this, which I really don't get. Maybe those are all the
| places iCloud Photos and Google Photos are currently available
| together? But I don't get that either.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It seems like they plan to support migrating to other services
| at some point but not yet?_
|
| Considering the fourth word of the second paragraph is
| "initially," I think you're correct -- this is a work in
| progress.
|
| I hope that Apple will eventually allow bulk downloads of
| iCloud photos to the desktop. Right now you can only do 1,000
| at a time, and it took me almost a week to make a local backup
| of my wife's iCloud photos.
| sigjuice wrote:
| Easy bulk downloads to the desktop (and hopefully to any
| attached external drive) would give me real peace of mind.
| Right now, I am a bit nervous with iCloud being the only full
| copy of my photos. None of my computers have enough storage
| to hold all my photos.
|
| It would be even cooler if my Synology could download all my
| photos directly from iCloud.
| intrasight wrote:
| That would be sweet.
|
| I'll mention that with the Synology app, you can have your
| photos be automatically copied to your Synology. I've been
| doing that since I got an iPhone, so I don't have the need
| to download from iCloud. Actually, I don't sync my photos
| to iCloud since I have my local copy.
| enra wrote:
| You can do this with the Windows iCloud app. Just downloaded
| 7000 photos through it.
| miles wrote:
| > I hope that Apple will eventually allow bulk downloads of
| iCloud photos to the desktop. Right now you can only do 1,000
| at a time
|
| When downloading directly from iCloud.com that's true (and
| annoying), but you can also bulk download all of the
| originals via Photos.app (making sure to check "Download
| Originals to this Mac" rather than "Optimize Mac Storage").
| intrasight wrote:
| I wonder if you can do this using an AWS instance of a mac.
| And then move the photos to S3.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _When downloading directly from iCloud.com that 's true
| (and annoying), but you can also bulk download all of the
| originals via Photos.app (making sure to check "Download
| Originals to this Mac" rather than "Optimize Mac
| Storage")._
|
| Unfortunately, that wouldn't work for my wife's situation.
| Her computer is one of those MacBooks with a 256GB drive,
| and only one USB-C port. So the amount of data stored in
| her iCloud photos would easily overload her drive, and if I
| hooked up an external drive, the computer would run out of
| power before the transfer completed.
|
| I'm not interested in buying a hub for a one-off operation.
|
| I tried afp:// and smb:// mounting Photos libraries on
| large drives on other machines on the LAN, then downloading
| the photos to those, but that turned out to be
| excruciatingly slow, and very unreliable.
| capableweb wrote:
| This is not directly aimed at you but rather the hilarity
| of the situation.
|
| > only one USB-C port [...] if I hooked up an external
| drive, the computer would run out of power before the
| transfer completed.
|
| Absolutely crazy how we ended up accepting supposedly
| professional devices that work like this. Choose between
| having power or being able to use a external hard drive
| (unless you purchase accessories of course). Mean while,
| desktop computers are built to be customizable in every
| single way.
| ktapcnbje wrote:
| I agree that it was outrageous that the MacBook
| (2015-2019) only had one USB port. However, Apple never
| called it Pro. The MacBook Pro has at least 2 USB ports.
| capableweb wrote:
| > However, Apple never called it Pro.
|
| I think in the marketing material, Apple tends to call
| everything they do "for professionals", not just the line
| of hardware with "Pro" in its name.
| reaperducer wrote:
| No, this was just a plain consumer-level MacBook, sold
| alongside both the Pro and the Air line.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_(2015-2019)
| lupire wrote:
| A laptop can be customized with accessories, same as a
| desktop can.
| simplerman wrote:
| > I'm not interested in buying a hub for a one-off
| operation.
|
| If cost is the issue, there are a lot of off-brand hubs.
| I bought one for $15 of Amazon. So far no issues.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| One of PC Magazine Editor's Choice name brand hubs with
| support for power delivery retails at $30.
| uneekname wrote:
| Admittedly an additional cost/annoyance, it is possible
| to buy USB-C "docks" that can supply power to your laptop
| while also plugging in another USB device.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Library view, All Photos, then click and shift-click to
| select a range of photos, File -> Export Unmodified
| Original. That way you can export a chunk at a time, as
| long as you keep track of which ones you stopped at for
| each batch.
| lostlogin wrote:
| But if your library is mostly on the cloud it gets worse.
|
| And how is this the best solution in 2021?
| anamexis wrote:
| I did the SMB share (over WiFi, to a NAS) you mentioned
| and backed up my library without too much trouble. This
| was about 120GB.
| miles wrote:
| If the other machines on your LAN include Windows or
| Linux boxes, you could use Photos.app in a macOS VM to
| bulk download the files; here are some projects that make
| it easy:
|
| macos-virtualbox: "Push-button installer of macOS
| Catalina, Mojave, and High Sierra guests in Virtualbox
| for Windows, Linux, and macOS"
| https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox
|
| macOS-Simple-KVM: "Tools to set up a quick macOS VM in
| QEMU, accelerated by KVM."
| https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM
| londons_explore wrote:
| It'll be countries where Apple is facing anti-trust complaints.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Yeah, just a small fraction of countries, like the United
| States and the European Union. I'm sure nobody cares about
| those places.
| user-the-name wrote:
| That is, in fact, a small fraction of the world population.
| grishka wrote:
| Is there a good reason for the code implementing this to know
| anything at all about the fact that the world is divided into
| countries? I don't think there is.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Yet every code implementation exists in some country bound
| by laws.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| So we can't accept a premise that these are countries
| that mandate such transfers, because not all of them do.
| And we can't accept a premise that these are countries
| that all have the same laws, because not all of them do.
| And we can't accept a premise that these are the
| countries whose laws make doing this easy, because many
| other countries place no obstacles whatsoever. So what
| other law thing should we be thinking of?
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Can you think of any reasons why it would be limited to just
| those countries? Note that I'm _not_ asking why those
| countries are nifty. I'm asking what you think Apple gains by
| limiting it to just those countries in the first place or
| would lose by not limiting it to just those countries. The
| feature technology would be the same regardless of where you
| are, so saying "only available to users in X" seems like an
| arbitrary restriction. And there are surely orders of
| magnitude more Apple iCloud users in Japan or India than in
| Liechtenstein.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| Easy migration to a competitor could hurt their customer
| retention.
|
| Why offer it at all then? At least in Europe the GDPR
| requires direct transfer of your data to a competitor where
| technically possible.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| The GDPR (or some similar requirement) only appears to
| apply to a subset of the chosen countries.
| flipbrad wrote:
| Note that the GDPR applies to businesses established in
| Europe, effectively regardless of the location or
| nationality of users. For instance, the UK authority
| recognised a US resident's right to invoke GDPR, during
| the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
| jonas21 wrote:
| If I had to guess, I'd say that Apple and Google probably
| have a contract that covers how this transfer takes place,
| and it takes some amount of effort from their legal teams
| to ensure that it's a valid contract that complies with the
| laws of each jurisdiction. As a result, they started with
| the highest-value jurisdictions like the US and EU first.
|
| Regarding Liechtenstein, it is (along with Iceland, Norway,
| and Switzerland) part of the European Single Market [1] via
| trade agreements with the EU, so it's possible that it was
| trivial to adapt whatever contract they were using in the
| EU to cover them as well. I don't think it's a coincidence
| that all 4 are on the list -- but again, this is just a
| guess.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market
| flipbrad wrote:
| GDPR covers the whole EEA (and UK), so the data
| portability right also applies in Liechtenstein.
| jakemal wrote:
| Yes, only a billion people in the wealthiest countries in the
| world who are most likely to own an Apple device.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| You don't think that more people use Apple iCloud in Japan
| or India (total population 1.5 billion) than in
| Liechtenstein (total population approximately 0)?
| umeshunni wrote:
| Liechtenstein is a part of the EU and is subject to the
| same regulations as the rest of the EU. Launching a
| product in Japan or India require an entirely new set of
| legal and regulatory work.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _Liechtenstein is a part of the EU_
|
| No it isn't, which is why Apple specifically calls it out
| when they also have an entry for "the European Union".
| Economic Area, yes, Union, no. And Switzerland is part of
| neither and has their own data regulation separate from
| the GDPR.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| There is a single trade framework that contains them all:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The actual transfer page also says "Choose where you'd like to
| transfer your photos:" and has a dropdown titled "Select
| destination"
|
| There's nothing but Google Photos to choose from now, but the
| intent is definitely to support other services.
| dangwu wrote:
| It's the first part of the Data Transfer Project - an
| initiative between major online service providers to provide an
| easy way to transfer data between their services.
| varispeed wrote:
| This is quite elaborately dishonest as data portability is
| one of the requirements of GDPR that came to life in 2018.
| It's not like suddenly those giants decided to be good
| companies and allowed data transfer between services. It
| looks like they use it as a PR piece and at the same time
| trying to ensure that users won't flock to competition that
| has not signed to their thing.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think you're looking at this the wrong way. The fact that
| companies can sell their regulatory obligations as a
| positive PR move is the carrot to get them to do it well
| and be proud of it. Stick only is how you get half-assed
| left to rot technically compliant implementations.
| krrrh wrote:
| That's interesting, and it's the first I've heard of the
| project. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Apple has yet
| released the adaptors to the open source project [1]. As much
| as I'm not interested in having Apple copy my photos to
| Google, I am very interested in scripting my own offline
| backups without having to make space for Photos.app to store
| all my photos on my laptop's SSD. Hopefully the adaptors are
| added to the project soon.
|
| [1] https://github.com/google/data-transfer-
| project/tree/master/...
| varispeed wrote:
| If you are in the EU, they are by law required to give you
| access to your data in a way so that you can achieve this.
| If this is not available then you can make a complaint and
| maybe sue them, but that costs money.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| Stop spreading this incorrect info. You already have
| access to this data on both Google Photos and iCloud
| Photos. The only notable thing is that Apple is offering
| to perform the transfer for you.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I am pretty sure this project is purpose built to keep your
| data amongst the big tech oligopoly. You exercising your
| freedom is no good for anyone.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Once your library gets large, local storage is just too
| hard and expensive on a laptop. Photos.app seems to hate
| using external or network drives.
| spullara wrote:
| I've been using it on an external drive for ages. What
| kinds of issues have you run into?
| intpx wrote:
| in the meantime, https://github.com/icloud-photos-
| downloader/icloud_photos_do... has been pretty reliable for
| me.
| lupire wrote:
| Sounds like a trust to keep minor providers out of the
| market.
| codercotton wrote:
| For those curious - https://datatransferproject.dev
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Ah, easing of travel restrictions often accompanies a
| diplomatic thaw.
| rakoo wrote:
| It is a bit sad to see something as simple as "you can now take
| your photos and put them where you want" become a newsworthy
| article. This is yet another demonstration that Digital Feudalism
| is alive and well, and just like its ancestor, we need to get rid
| of it by empowering people to be their own self
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It is newsworthy considering that they did this without being
| forced to do so. Things like telephone number porting weren't
| possible until the Federal government forced the issue
| gumby wrote:
| Although I do consider "digital feudalism" a legitimate risk, I
| don't think this is a good example. An increasing number of
| people don't have laptops but instead just phones and game
| consoles, so so have no access to normal data-centric
| affordances.
|
| There is a real risk but it's not that different from the pre
| cloud era: that of proprietary formats. Google Docs itself is
| proprietary (if you map the Google Drive files to your local
| filesystem in the style of Dropbox the actual local data store
| locally is just a URI). It's worse, but not a huge amount worse
| than having your files be a proprietary blob, say a Word file.
|
| And there are of course innumerable services that have data
| that never leaves the cloud from Facebook at one extreme to
| various services such as Gantt charts that aren't downloadable
| in any meaningful way.
|
| But as I said I don't think this one case is a good example: In
| the case of Apple's stuff, I can keep it all current on my
| laptop: just tell photos, iCloud files, music etc to keep a
| complete copy on the local disk (i.e. don't treat it as a
| chache) and then back up normally. Music, photos, etc are
| stored in normal files (JPEG and mp3). My IMAP client downloads
| everything (messages and attachments) so if I were willing to
| use iCloud mail or gmail everything would be backed up; ditto
| for my calendars and address book. This is the same for many
| other cloud providers like Dropbox.
| lilyball wrote:
| You could always download your entire iCloud Photos library and
| reupload it anywhere else you wanted, it's just tedious. The
| noteworthy thing is Apple will transfer your photos to Google
| Photos entirely on your behalf, without you having to download
| a single photo.
| Triv888 wrote:
| While it is sad that it is news worthy, it goes against Steve
| Jobs' ideology...
| mszcz wrote:
| Yeah, it's the "lets you" part that ticks me off. That's the
| reason I have both Google Photos upload and Dropbox Upload
| enabled. Don't want to wake up one time to find out my photos
| are gone because some algo had a bad day.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| You've always been "allowed" to move your photos from Apple
| Photos to Google Photos. The difference here is that Apple is
| _doing it for you_.
| mszcz wrote:
| Oh. Well, my dislike for the big tech lock-in solutions is
| more general in nature. Thanks for clearing it up.
|
| Curious, what happens if Apple locks your account (not in
| their ecosystem but M1 got me apple-curious ;)? Can you
| still export you're data, photos?
| philposting wrote:
| Probably not from their online service, but unless you
| switch on "optimise local storage", all of the files are
| already on your local disk in JPEG or HEIC.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| What do you mean by "locks your account"? If you're using
| Photos on a Mac then everything is stored locally. If
| you're using iCloud, you still have the option to
| download all the originals locally. The only people that
| would really make use of this are those that don't know
| how to open the Photos library to access the photos
| directly.
| planb wrote:
| But you could always do this. Apple seems to go a step further
| and does this on your behalf. I think that's newsworthy.
| amelius wrote:
| I still can't insert a USB drive into an iPad without hassle.
| Black101 wrote:
| Why do you use an IPAD if you want freedom?
| bydo wrote:
| You can on an iPad Pro?
| crazysim wrote:
| And on other iPads with an adapter too:
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/connect-external-
| devi...
| megablast wrote:
| And I can't still plug my vga monitor into my iPhone.
| Black101 wrote:
| you can, for $699, per month
| kekub wrote:
| Actually you can - there is an adapter [1] for that.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD825AM/A/lightning-
| to-vg...
| yreg wrote:
| What a time to be alive!
| Spivak wrote:
| From literally any browser you can get a zip of all your
| iCloud photos and your iPhone/iPad will present itself as a
| mass storage device on any PC.
| etxm wrote:
| I still can't download a car.
| airstrike wrote:
| If anyone's trying to make that a reality, I just want to
| say I'd much rather download pizza.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| My friend showed me a sandisk doodad he bought off eBay the
| other day that had an iPad plug coming off it. I was
| impressed. So strike that one off.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| You can with a lightning USB drive or a lightning to USB
| adapter, but it'll only transfer at USB 2.0 speeds on most
| iPhones, iPads, and iPad Pros with Lightning. Some will
| apparently do USB3 speeds but you need the right adapter.
| And if you plug it into your iDevice into your computer
| with a lighting to USBC or A adapter, it's still just USB 2
| speeds. At least as of the last time I looking into it.
| Apple always made it hard to figure this out. The newer
| USB-C ones you can transfer faster.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Take Gmail as an example. They provided nice way of allowing
| applications to access your mailbox. Then we got data mining
| apps which started using this for malicious purposes (with user
| consent). Now the API is only available for developers willing
| to go through security audit ($15k-75k).
|
| 10 years ago Facebook provided a pretty nice set of APIs and
| way to grant access to your data (for example photos, messages,
| friend lists) for 3rd party apps. What we got was 1000 quiz
| apps using these for data mining - with user consent.
|
| Android is another example. Initially Google put little
| restrictions for data applications could access - with
| permission from user. We all know what happened.
|
| I'm not saying we should stop trying to tear down the walled
| gardens, but this is not trivial problem to solve. Some users
| might be even better off with their data locked in the garden
| managed by Apple, Google or Facebook.
| varispeed wrote:
| They were required to do this by law in the EU.
| mbroncano wrote:
| Could you please elaborate on that? Which particular law are
| they abiding?
| varispeed wrote:
| It is covered by right to data portability included in GDPR
| passed in 2018.
|
| https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
| mbreese wrote:
| Doesn't that say that Apple has to give you access to
| your photos in a format where you could then upload the
| photos/videos to Google? It doesn't say that Apple has to
| perform the transfer for you. That's the novelty here --
| Apple handling the transfer on their side without any
| user intervention.
|
| Given the country list, this is being done to likely get
| ahead of some kind of regulation, but I don't think this
| is necessarily due to this specific clause. This is above
| and beyond what would be minimally required.
|
| But from other comments, it looks like this is the start
| of other data transfer initiatives between major tech
| companies. Which would be a good thing, even if it is a
| result of trying to avoid further regulation.
| criddell wrote:
| And is Google required to do something similar to help users
| transfer their photos to a competing service?
| varispeed wrote:
| Every service available in the EU and the UK has to do it.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| This is incorrect. The photos in Apple Photos and iCloud were
| already portable. Apple is now offering to do this for you
| which is the only notable thing about this. Nowhere in the
| GDPR does it say that a company has to move your data for you
| if requested. They just have to allow you to move it if you
| choose to do so and that was already the case.
| thombles wrote:
| There are options in the middle - e.g. in M365 Personal, camera
| uploads are deposited as plain old files in your OneDrive
| Pictures folder and the Win10 photos app is driven directly by
| that. I periodically take offline backups by copying my
| OneDrive to an external drive and sleep easy that I have all my
| stuff.
| ljm wrote:
| I switched from OneDrive to pCloud for that reason, because
| this isn't a special feature... it's just how filesystems
| work.
|
| My account isn't much more than a networked drive, so this
| idea of adding 'transfer to another cloud' or whatever is
| still a regression.
|
| While we're here, read the title: "Apple now lets you..."
|
| _Lets_? Oh, thanks for giving permission, Apple. I don 't
| think any of this would fly under the GDPR's data portability
| provisions.
| RoadieRoller wrote:
| My criminal mind says this could be a way for Apple (and Later
| Google) to benefit more, from the difference in the price of
| their phones - Thanks to pricing based on Storage. Once they
| allow these photo storages to duplicate your data, you will
| need double the storage and phone starting line-up would be
| 256GB and upwards very soon. I think innovation to make money
| has saturated, and now it would be quirks like this to make
| more money per phone.
| [deleted]
| Barrin92 wrote:
| force protocols to be open would just about do it. People would
| trivially write cross-service applications on top and we could
| have an internet where people can freely move data around.
| Apple and Google would be delegated to the backend and users
| could choose the clients they want. It's honestly so trivial
| and uninvasive of a regulatory matter it's ridiculous. We're
| stuck in the 19th century railroad industry.
| d0mine wrote:
| http was open once and technically it is open now. Soon the
| complexity of the protocol will allow only the major
| corporations to implement it (and it is unclear whether that
| complexity helps most people).
| ezekg wrote:
| It kind of baffles me that people really want so much
| regulation. We already have more than enough of it.
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| There is a lot of secret sauce in protocols. Those decisions
| can have serious positive/negative implications on
| performance and features. Making those easily available to
| everyone could potentially destroy a business.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I've had to reverse engineer my share of
| proprietary protocols to get behavior I wanted (and would
| have loved to see them be open), but I don't think I can get
| onboard with the idea that requiring open protocols is
| trivial or noninvasive.
| lupire wrote:
| The secret sauce in Apple/Google photos is not the API for
| accessing the data.
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| But we aren't discussing just these specific
| APIs/protocols (and I haven't look at them, so I'd have
| to take your word on that), we are discussing this
| generally.
| drstewart wrote:
| >It's honestly so trivial and uninvasive of a regulatory
| matter it's ridiculous
|
| You can't honestly believe this. Even if one agrees with
| making some things open protocols, potentialy by law
| (messenger, social networks), stating "it's trivial" to do
| such a thing is just the height of hyperbole.
| simonh wrote:
| I'm afraid some people really do seem to believe this. Hard
| to understand, I know. Fixed, regulator defined protocols
| everyone would be forced to use. Sheesh.
| [deleted]
| azinman2 wrote:
| So, someone (who?) comes out with a standard, and then
| everyone just freezes capabilities then? Nothing evolves? Or
| if it does, it does so very unequally? Already in this
| announcement is the non-transfer of Live Photos because
| presumably Google doesn't support it. Apparently they also
| have a 20k per album cap, which at that point you get
| different behavior than you're expecting. These are just a
| few examples of where things go wrong.
|
| If we're going to legislate anything, I believe the right way
| is to force complete data export is made available via a
| reasonable API/process, which then allows people to
| independently evolve & progress, and competitors will then
| need to support (or not) what comes out on the other side.
| But customers then know they can always extract or simply
| backup their data themselves if needed.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >and then everyone just freezes capabilities then? Nothing
| evolves? Or if it does, it does so very unequally?
|
| every client provider can do whatever they want, that'd be
| the beauty of it. Someone could write a stripped down,
| privacy respecting Facebook client and charge users five
| bucks instead of running ads, if that's what users want.
| Someone could offer a chronological news-feed free of
| algorithmic meddling, or one that you can fine-tune however
| you like. That'd would simply be developer and user choice.
| Just think of RSS-readers or podcast apps or email clients.
| They're not all equal, but that's a feature, not something
| gone wrong.
| dwighttk wrote:
| But I already have and use an rss reader
| puszczyk wrote:
| What does the Facebook get out of it?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| absolutely nothing, it would subject their applications
| to genuine competition (they could of course still offer
| their own client) and destroy their walled garden, which
| is the entire point. The purpose such regulation is to
| benefit consumers, developers, and the health of the
| market overall. not Facebook. I assume they would be
| kicking and screaming.
| [deleted]
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > it would subject their applications to genuine
| competition (they could of course still offer their own
| client) and destroy their walled garden, which is the
| entire point.
|
| Hmm. At least in the case that the OP was taking about --
| third-party Facebook clients -- I don't think it would
| "destroy their walled garden" any more than third-party
| Twitter clients did back when those were meaningfully a
| thing. Standardized APIs aimed at enabling full-featured
| third-party social network clients wouldn't really
| contribute to a robust market in competing social
| networks; they'd just contribute to a robust market in,
| well, third-party social network clients.
|
| What it seems to me you want is a couple steps beyond
| data portability, which honestly really isn't enough on
| its own. What I actually need is a way to import the
| user's _social graph_ from Facebook or Twitter. That 's
| arguably how Instagram bootstrapped its success
| initially: if you gave it your Twitter account, it would
| download all your followers/following info. (And, of
| course, that's why Twitter shut down that API after
| that.)
|
| "But doesn't that violate GDPR?" someone is raising their
| hand to say, and: yes. GDPR as written does help protect
| privacy, but it's also an incredible boon to social
| network incumbents: it under it, your social graph _can
| 't_ be treated as your data, because by definition it
| contains personally identifiable information about all
| your contacts. For your regulation idea to be meaningful,
| GDPR and similar privacy regulation around the world
| would have to be overhauled -- if all the "open API" can
| do is import/export my personal data sans social graph,
| it becomes little more than a backup mechanism and a
| convenient way to fill out registration forms.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| > every client provider can do whatever they want
|
| I feel like you're missing his point a bit, which is that
| sure they can do whatever they want, but it would be
| within a well-defined and highly regulated system, and
| would need to conform to an interface that would be
| difficult to change and evolve.
|
| A bit like how IRC never really got updated with features
| people like to see in newer IM apps, like conversation
| history, read receipts, sending images and videos,
| threading, and so on. Or HTTP. Or email. Federation
| always leads to ossification.
| lrem wrote:
| I think you missed an important link here: opening the
| API is not the same as making a good standard. The latter
| tends to take years. The former... Well, Google internal
| APIs often have minor changes every couple weeks. And the
| standard of documentation is more or less "go read the
| code". Opening those would not be useful. I don't know if
| Facebook is any better. But their motto is "move fast and
| break things", so I'm skeptical.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| don't forget that there will be competition _on the
| protocols as well_ , I'm not just arguing for protocols
| as a means for more innovation on the client side, but
| also more competition on the backend itself. If data
| becomes portable, which is one side effect of protocols,
| competition on standards itself intensifies. So if Google
| and Facebook are bad stewards of their APIs, there is
| room for competition to emerge. Google does stuff that
| sucks on their end? Use existing APIs to migrate over to
| dropbox or whatever, tell your users. In an open market
| there is an incentive for good standards.
| barnabee wrote:
| Forcing the protocol to be open and documented and free for
| any user that can use the official site/client to connect
| to doesn't have to mean forcing a standard. You might want
| to require o rubies compatibility with old versions and
| deal with obfuscation or unnecessary changes as anti
| competitive behaviour, but otherwise just ensuring that
| anyone can create and sell or give away clients,
| interoperability and import/export tools, etc. would be an
| excellent step in the right direction. With no obvious
| downsides.
| lupire wrote:
| HTML had been a standard for about 25 years and it doesn't
| seem to be stagnant.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > Already in this announcement is the non-transfer of Live
| Photos because presumably Google doesn't support it.
|
| Google Photos definitely supports Live Photos, I've
| successfully uploaded and shared lots of Live Photos via
| the Google Photos for iOS app.
|
| Which then raises the question of why doesn't the tool
| support it?
| kemayo wrote:
| Assuming that they're using the Google Photos API for
| this, maybe the upload media API calls [1] don't trigger
| whatever handling is needed for Live Photos? The Google
| Photos app might be doing something
| undocumented/unavailable-in-the-public-API that triggers
| the Live Photo behavior, since a Live Photo is two
| associated pieces of media.
|
| Or Apple might just not be uploading the videos that
| accompany the photo for some reason.
|
| [1]: https://developers.google.com/photos/library/guides/
| upload-m...
| jwagenet wrote:
| Just spitballing here: when I copy photos from my iPhone
| via usb to pc there are two files: the image and a .mov
| for a Live Photo. My guess is the metadata is lost when
| exporting to google photos, like usb, so you lose the
| "Live Photo".
| coldtea wrote:
| > _So, someone (who?) comes out with a standard, and then
| everyone just freezes capabilities then? Nothing evolves?_
|
| Hopefully yes. Most "progress" is towards worse services
| and more user data minining and ads.
|
| But if needed, they can always innovate. But they'd still
| have to be able to export to the standard format (even if
| it can hold less than their full features).
| fishywang wrote:
| An interface doesn't necessarily limit what the
| implementation can do. An implementation can well be a
| super set of the interface (some open standard it
| supports), with additional features that's not in the
| interface.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > It's honestly so trivial and uninvasive of a regulatory
| matter it's ridiculous.
|
| At what point do you become compelled to start transforming
| your web application into an open protocol?
| pydry wrote:
| Maybe at the unicorn mark.
| xmprt wrote:
| I think smaller companies tend to have the most open
| protocols (to the point that it almost becomes a security
| risk) because they don't have resources to work on
| unnecessary obfuscation. The protocols might not be
| documented anywhere but if a website is able to access a
| backend endpoint then someone else will be able to access
| that endpoint too.
|
| Nothing in the parent comment says anything about requiring
| good documentation or 100% backwards compatibility.
| barnabee wrote:
| Certainly any company that relies on "safe harbor" style
| protections or sells online services (alone or bundled with
| software) as a subscription should be required to fully
| open and document the protocol.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| But most SaaS companies don't make protocols, they make
| web applications. So I'm not really sure what's implied
| by these trivial-to-implement protocols. Having a
| functional and well documented API isn't a protocol. An
| open protocol would be more like a situation where any
| vendor could implement an "iCloud service", and any
| "iCloud client" could connect to any vendors service.
| y04nn wrote:
| Please add a way to export Notes also. I've not tried hard to
| export them because I still can access them, but I would like a
| way to export them to an archive.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Ulysses has an AppleScript export to Markdown files, that might
| work for you.
| fungiblecog wrote:
| Just give us a 'download all' button with the ability to resume
| in the event of a failure. RSync has been around for a long time
| why reinvent the wheel for every different service. Welcome to
| Modern tech - constantly reinventing (square) wheel
| Black101 wrote:
| They would loose control if they allowed you to use modern
| tools that work well
| fartcannon wrote:
| But if I don't pretend your photos live in an ephemeral
| 'cloud', instead of where they really are - on my server, how
| can I trick you into letting me hide them behind a worse-than-
| even-just-using-FTP webpage.
|
| Walled Gardens Must Die.
| luplex wrote:
| GDPR gives you this button. You can do a full data request.
| This was introduced for exactly this usecase, to make it
| possible to switch service providers.
|
| Now only Google needs to be able to read Apple's format.
| safog wrote:
| Pretty sure even if Google doesn't support it explicitly,
| you'll have open source tools that can download + re-upload
| to Google.
| lupire wrote:
| That assumes Google provides API and authorizes the access,
| or else you're stuck scraping complex web apps with a
| Chrome extension.
|
| Custom 3rd party software is usually banned from a consumer
| cloud API for security reasons.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| This exists if you have a Mac. Set Photos to "Download
| Originals" in the settings and every photo will be downloaded
| to the "originals" directory in your photo library bundle.
| goblin89 wrote:
| If you want to get your photos out of iCloud but not using
| Photos, there's a neat cross-platform Python CLI tool called
| icloudpd[0]. It uses iCloud API, supports 2FA, and has a
| variety of options to control what's downloaded (e.g., by
| album).
|
| It helped me free up iCloud storage without filling up my SSD
| (which is what would've happened if I synced the whole
| library using Photos). I pointed icloudpd to one massive
| album with random Filmic footage, which I then transferred to
| external storage. Download took multiple runs due to size and
| network interruptions, thankfully the tool avoids
| redownloading already completed items.
|
| [0] https://github.com/icloud-photos-
| downloader/icloud_photos_do...
| kall wrote:
| I would also like this button, but I would not be surprised if
| a good chunk of users have an icloud photo library so large
| that none of their apple devices could fit it in it's
| (underspeced) storage.
| ProAm wrote:
| Just upgrade the SSD
| dkonofalski wrote:
| What an ignorant thing to say. You pretend like external hard
| drives don't exist.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Well... In the end, you probably do want to back things up in a
| way that detaches the photos from iCloud sync issues.
|
| The best solution I have found is to use Photos on the Mac to
| pull down all of your photos and then the osxphotos python
| project to export them with full metadata and tagging to the
| directory of your choice which you back up using other means.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Rsync, the command line even, is familiar to vanishingly small
| slice of the Apple user base.
|
| It's amazing how out of touch developers on HN are from the
| average Apple user. Completely, utterly, impossibly out of
| touch with reality.
|
| Try to imagine proposing a project like this to the internal
| teams at Apple and being asked "Who is this for!?"
| dartharva wrote:
| Unrelated, but this reminds me of a recent incident. A friend
| came over to me asking for help transferring his WhatsApp chats
| from his old iPhone to his new Android phone. Turns out there is
| no official/practical way to do that, and he lost all hos chat
| and media records made across years (WhatsApp is the main mode of
| communication here, it's like opening up your official mail inbox
| one day and finding it completely empty).
|
| He said he had lost them earlier as well, when he had migrated to
| an iPhone from an Android.
| XCSme wrote:
| I also lost all my WhatsApp history and data when I added
| WhatsApp to a new phone. Weird that it can only be active on
| one device.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The issue is how the data is backed up on Android vs iOS. In
| theory, if your iCloud or Google account is the same between
| devices then transfer to a new, same-OS device is trivial. It
| should "just work" in most cases. But WhatsApp does not
| provide its own backup service (which is fine with me) nor
| does it allow you to specify where to back it up to (which is
| not fine with me). If it did, then users switching between
| iOS and Android would have no (or little) trouble.
| drops wrote:
| That's actually kind of insane. Seamless transfer would take
| quite a high priority on the scale of things to implement, one
| would (and will) imagine. Transferring from and iPhone to an
| iPhone is so well-done that it actually adds to the pleasure of
| having a new phone.
|
| This sounds like something a fanboy would say, but honestly
| it's just a really rather objective comparison of the
| functionality.
| mav3rick wrote:
| It's because Whatsapp backs up to Google Drive and iCloud
| respectively. I have no idea why the backup format can't be
| agnostic of what it's backed up on. That would make the syncing
| logic agnostic as well.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| Maybe it is. It's encrypted though so could be hard to check.
| krrrh wrote:
| It's interesting to watch consumer behaviour around Telegram's
| growth and how much value people place on preserving
| conversation history at the expense of security and privacy.
| Even people who are aware that e2e encryption is only enabled
| on Telegram when you explicitly open a private chat soon
| abandon it because it lacks multi-device support which makes it
| easy to miss messages.
|
| WhatsApp has always simplified their security model by not even
| attempting to support multiple devices (the desktop app
| communicates via your phone instead of directly with the
| servers). This greatly simplifies the server infrastructure for
| WhatsApp too, but there really is no good excuse for them not
| supporting portable local backup and restore after all these
| years.
|
| For your friend's sake, the app Anytrans claims to be able to
| backup and restore WhatsApp between platforms. I haven't tried
| it for that, but it might be worth checking out. It's part of
| Setapp.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > It's interesting to watch consumer behaviour around
| Telegram's growth and how much value people place on
| preserving conversation history at the expense of security
| and privacy.
|
| Persistent, multi-device conversation history might not seem
| valuable at first glance, but I can say that it's saved me a
| lot of trouble numerous times. In theory one could back up
| important messages from WhatsApp/Signal as they show up, but
| the problem is that the vast majority of the messages that
| end up being valuable at some point down the road are
| precisely those that seemed inconsequential in the moment. By
| the time you realize you need them they've been long deleted.
| wave100 wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is a feature I got grandfathered into,
| but I've got WhatsApp set to back my messages up to Google
| Drive every week. On my Android phone, the setting is in
| settings -> chats -> chat backup.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _It 's interesting to watch consumer behaviour around
| Telegram's growth and how much value people place on
| preserving conversation history at the expense of security
| and privacy_
|
| Telegram has a feature to import all of your WhatsApp
| history, but I haven't tried it yet.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| I want them to support smb. I would like to be able to sync my
| photos to a network share. This doesn't mean I wouldn't still buy
| iCloud space.
| pentae wrote:
| Would love to see this come to Apple Notes, it'd be great to be
| able to export just for backup purposes
| philposting wrote:
| There's this nice app:
| https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/exporter/id1099120373?mt=12
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Any idea why they built this to go straight to Google rather than
| just exporting in a standard format for Google to upload? There
| aren't any other real competitors AFAIK, but still why not just
| make it a simple export rather than an integration that will
| require continual maintenance?
| lxgr wrote:
| Having both would be nice, but given the amounts of data
| available and the asymmetric nature of many residential
| internet connections, I think doing the upload themselves would
| be prohibitive for many users.
| _jal wrote:
| My guess is this is designed for the lowest-common-denominator.
|
| Sucking down a multi-hundred-gig tarball on a phone to turn
| around and re-upload sounds like a poor user experience to me,
| and Apple has opinions about those.
| lostlogin wrote:
| For me that would be a 600+ gig download. I wish I could do it,
| but it's a little unwieldy.
| jmfisch wrote:
| Convenience, speed, and technical difficulty (for the typical
| person, not HN reader). Definitely, I've faced this problem. My
| photo and video library on Google Photos is now much larger
| than the free space I have on any device. The hassle of
| downloading in chunks, just to re-upload (and heaven help
| anyone on an ISP with data caps) is huge. It's also probably
| very slow - consider the bandwidth between an Apple and a
| Google server - most likely in the 10Gbps range? Compare that
| with an average person doing 50Mbps down and then 8Mbps up. For
| a 500GB library that takes _hours_.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > Any idea why they built this to go straight to Google rather
| than just exporting in a standard format for Google to upload?
|
| I'm of the (perhaps cynical) view that Apple is only doing this
| to satisfy their legal obligations under the GDPR, and GDPR
| requires direct transfer.
| janaagaard wrote:
| Probably because they want this to work for people who only
| have a mobile device. Agree that it would be nice to have an
| option to download everything.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| i wanted to do the exact opposite, moving photos from Google to
| apple icloud but google takeout exports are a complete mess
| Black101 wrote:
| next thing, they will let you hold the copyright for your own
| pictures...
| msh wrote:
| Then we are only missing google providing the same service!
|
| (I know of google takeout, which is great but not the same as
| this)
| anotherQuarter wrote:
| I recently moved photos from google photos to icloud using
| google takeout and it removed meta data from the vast majority
| of my photos.
|
| Photos with correct dates and locations in google photos not
| longer have any of that data in icloud. Makes icloud photos a
| lot less usable, not sure if anyone else has had this issue
| (can't find any articles on it)
|
| Anyways agree that google takeout needs improvement.
| jkingsman wrote:
| They will usually attach metadata in JSON files accompanying
| the downloads if it's not attached to the photos, in my
| experience.
| 1f60c wrote:
| Yup. For those of us with slow WiFi, Google Takeout is
| basically unusable.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| FWIW, you can do a takeout to another service like OneDrive
| or another Google Drive account and use their clients to
| sync. You can probably use wget to download in a more stable
| way, too.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| If you really want to get those files, you could try using a
| VM on a fast network (not sure which cloud offering would be
| best for this in terms of bandwidth cost).
|
| This is not ideal at all, just suggesting a trick I've used
| in the past as a workaround for big downloads on an
| unreliable network. Obviously Google should just improve
| their service.
| kuyan wrote:
| I've had the same experience. The worst part is that you can
| only retry a download of a Google Takeout archive so many
| times before it locks you out, and you have to wait a day or
| so for a new takeout...
| VladimirGolovin wrote:
| Takeout is NOT great, at least in my case. I never once managed
| to fully download my photo archive, despite my repeated
| attempts. I gave up, so my current "strategy" for keeping my
| photos safe is "Never ever do anything that might make Google
| algorithms think that I'm violating their ToS".
| jkingsman wrote:
| Yup, when I do my quarterly "Takeout everything" I always
| separate the photos request out because it takes 3-4 attempts
| to get it to work. Every single other service? Almost always
| works first time, even when they're all combined. Photos is
| the problem child.
| cryptoquick wrote:
| What, so Google can just go ahead and delete them?
| Clampower wrote:
| Does anybody have a way do something like this from Google photos
| to a different host? I really want a second copy of stuff on
| Google photos, and takeout is completely unusable for me.
| cube2222 wrote:
| Is there similar functionality for the other way around?
|
| So basically a simple migration from Google Photos to iCloud?
| smoldesu wrote:
| This should be what you're looking for:
| https://takeout.google.com
| nlgfd wrote:
| nah it's not the same - I migrated from Google Photos to
| OneDrive last month and while it did migrate everything to
| OneDrive for me, it put everything into little 10GB .zips
| that I had to download, extract, re-upload.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Takeout is table stakes for Google's position in the market.
| They really need to better support 3rd parties making a
| Takeout request on behalf of a user, and those services then
| retrieving the Takeout bundle for ingestion.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| But what about the privacy, the PRIVACY! /s
|
| I'm 100% sure that's the excuse they will give, but I don't
| think this is a huge problem as long as there is a big
| scary box about what allowing an app to use Takeout means
| (a scarier box than just normal permissions, probably lots
| of red and exclamation points).
| asadlionpk wrote:
| I would love that as I have to move my family from Google to
| iCloud.
| vishnumohandas wrote:
| If Apple opened up their APIs so that data could be imported by
| ANY authorized third party service, that would be fantastic. This
| post is about a behind-closed-doors deal with Google. Maybe I'm
| missing something, but I don't see a reason to celebrate.
| varispeed wrote:
| They have to do it by law (GDPR) if they want to sell their
| products in the EU. People should start making complaints that
| they cannot port their data to other services, then they should
| implement that in no time.
| ncann wrote:
| A bit sad that Google Photos will start charging you for storage
| soon, but it's still miles better than iCloud Photos in almost
| everything. From search, to timeline overview, to seamless
| integration with my Chromecast, to automatic face tagging, to
| editing.
| janlaureys wrote:
| Anecdotal annoyance with automatic face tagging: Old dog and
| new dog look very similar. Google keeps tagging my new dog as
| if he were my old dog and I haven't found a way to fix that
| without manually going through every single picture and
| untagging/retagging.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| I'm just amazed these services have face tagging for _dogs_ ,
| and that you consider it so obvious that you feel like
| complaining about it.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I uploaded a 4D obstetric ultrasound to get rid of the CD.
| Photos.app tagged it as my child. That blew my mind.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If it's broken, then it's broken. It doesn't matter how
| futuristic and awesome it is.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Yep, in this case it sounds like "awesome futuristic idea
| poorly implemented" is worse than not having the feature.
|
| Adding a simple toggle to disable it (or even better, a
| blacklist of tags to never auto-add) would be the best
| compromise.
| jeffbee wrote:
| On the web site, go to "explore" and pick the face of either
| dog, it should offer a little button that says "Same or
| different?" that will give you an opportunity to train it.
| datavirtue wrote:
| They can train your dog?!
| mav3rick wrote:
| You can manually go and say "this is my new dog" to improve
| the tagging.
| coralreef wrote:
| Not concerned with handing all that data to Google?
| lorec0re wrote:
| no
| jftuga wrote:
| Workaround: install the Google Opinion Rewards app which is
| even available on iPhone. It will ask you survey questions
| about places you have recently visited. (Yes, it tracks you).
| Over the course of a year, you can earn $20 in "virtual" money
| which can then be used to purchase the 100GB/year plan.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| You can (I do) earn that much without location sharing. But
| I've been doing it for a long time so I seem to get more
| surveys than I did at first. Looking at my history, I average
| just shy of 1.75/month.
| Alupis wrote:
| > A bit sad that Google Photos will start charging you for
| storage soon
|
| Google has always charged for storage in Google Photos - it's
| part of your "Google Drive" storage quota. They do give you
| 10GB free though, which can be substantial for a lot of folks.
| prlin wrote:
| There was a free tier of photos and videos under a certain
| resolution which didn't count towards your storage which
| they're removing.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Those "free" photos and videos were still recompressed.
| Alupis wrote:
| I was under the impression that was only for Pixel phone
| owners - I suppose I was mistaken!
|
| Although low resolution image uploads doesn't seem very
| useful for most people. The point of cloud storage is peace
| of mind to keep your data safe... and to me that implies
| the original photos not reduced resolution photos.
| esolyt wrote:
| > Although low resolution image uploads doesn't seem very
| useful
|
| They are still very high resolution. They're just not the
| original 50 MB file. It worked perfectly well for the
| overwhelming majority of people.
|
| Pixel offered unlimited storage even for uncompressed
| photos, but that option was also discontinued a few years
| ago.
| bracketslash wrote:
| They have also always had unlimited uploads for free at lower
| quality.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Photos.app search has drastically improved ever since it
| started to use AI. I believe it was a search for "paper" that I
| did not too long ago, and which came up with several photos
| that were practically where-is-waldo games for me trying to
| find the paper.
| tspike wrote:
| How about privacy?
| izacus wrote:
| I haven't seen any of my photos given out to anyone, so
| what's your concern? The ToS also doesn't say anything about
| sharing my private photos.
| acdha wrote:
| Search is a mixed bag: Google configured it with low thresholds
| and was resistant to adding an error correction mechanism, so
| e.g. "cat" would match my dog and there was nothing I could do
| about it.
|
| The main thing, however, is the social features. iCloud just
| works and works well. Google Photos UI was really clunky and
| notifications weren't reliable so I'd miss comments from
| relatives.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Doesn't the Google Photo app do this already without waiting? Is
| there a use-case for this?
| navanchauhan wrote:
| If I understand correctly, this directly transfers data from
| Apple's server to theirs.
|
| You don't need to even install their app.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Seems like a one-time export, unless I'm wrong.
|
| CloudHQ used to synchronize content between clouds but they
| seem to have fewer features these days.
| baby wrote:
| I really really hate how locked I am on the products I own...
|
| I pay for Apple music yet I can't play it on my Google home.
|
| I use Google maps yet in some apps it forces me to use Apple maps
| (even though I don't have it installed).
|
| I use Google photos, which I can't use to manage my photos in the
| native way that Apple photos do it.
|
| Airdrop only works between Apple devices.
|
| I use Chrome and yet some apps will just open links in Safari
| (iOS).
| enos_feedler wrote:
| At least being able to move your photos out of Apple Photos is
| a step towards not locking you into Apple's ecosystem. I don't
| think the ultimate goal is removing lock in completely. It's a
| fools errand to try and defeat it. The goal should be to free
| you from being locked into a company that takes it too far.
| This creates free choice and a market opportunity for another
| business to serve people like you.
|
| Also .. I thought Apple Music was added to Google Home? I
| thought Apple now allows you to choose Google Maps as default
| mapping app?
| sigjuice wrote:
| So far, Apple only allows changing the default web browser or
| email app.
| Maxburn wrote:
| More ways to do this is nice but you could always download and
| upload. This isn't some amazing new thing that was keeping you
| from doing that.
| minikites wrote:
| Why would I transfer my photos _into_ Google Photos, a service
| that Google will probably shut down in a year, once it has
| outlived its purpose of training their machine learning models?
| The only reason Gmail is still around is because of how valuable
| that data is for advertisers. Google can 't run ads on your
| family photos so as soon as they have enough photos for their
| machine learning algorithms, they'll shut down the service. I
| can't imagine the thought process of someone who thinks it would
| be a good idea to migrate all of your personal photos _to_ a
| service run by an advertising company.
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