Apple announces cheaper iCloud storage plans, Photos for Mac coming in early 2015
Apple's dedicated Photos application will be making the leap from iPhone and iPad to the Mac early next year, giving users the ability to view all of their pictures synced with iCloud, which will also see a price cut with new, cheaper cloud storage plans.
Photos for Mac was demonstrated at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday. It was shown alongside the new Photos app coming with iOS 8, which will launch for iPhone and iPad later this year.
Photos on all platforms includes new editing capabilities, which were shown off by Apple's software chief Craig Federighi. In one demonstration, he showcased the ability to crop, adjust angle and improve colors on an outdoor photo.
With Photos devices will sync all photos as well as videos in their original format and resolution. Photos will sync with iCloud storage, which comes with 5 gigabytes, and files can even be viewed from a browser.
To help those who might have large photo libraries, Apple is also introducing new pricing for iCloud subscriptions. Users can access 20 gigabytes of cloud storage for 99 cents per month, or 200 gigabytes for $3.99 per month. Plans up to 1 terabyte will be available.
Photos for Mac was demonstrated at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday. It was shown alongside the new Photos app coming with iOS 8, which will launch for iPhone and iPad later this year.
Photos on all platforms includes new editing capabilities, which were shown off by Apple's software chief Craig Federighi. In one demonstration, he showcased the ability to crop, adjust angle and improve colors on an outdoor photo.
With Photos devices will sync all photos as well as videos in their original format and resolution. Photos will sync with iCloud storage, which comes with 5 gigabytes, and files can even be viewed from a browser.
To help those who might have large photo libraries, Apple is also introducing new pricing for iCloud subscriptions. Users can access 20 gigabytes of cloud storage for 99 cents per month, or 200 gigabytes for $3.99 per month. Plans up to 1 terabyte will be available.
Comments
Excited about this- now I need to clean up my thousands of pictures on my iMac
Not for me, why not just go head to head with say Google Drive. I get 100GB for 99c per month. Cloud is cloud, I don't see apple really providing any better or worse experience than the rest, so why make it more expensive?
Google Drive is nowhere near as intuitive. This is baked into stock iOS Apps (Camera and Photos) that links automatically with all my iDevices and Macs. Tell me how that's the same as Google Drive.
$24 difference a year isn't a big deal to me for that ease of use.
How about head to head with DropBox? They're the standard currently.
Google is cheap because they're trying to buy into the market.
I will agree it's not as seemless within the OS. I suppose it's more directed at the consumer not the professional.
For sure- it won't be of any advantage for pros. But being able to see pics taken on a DSLR of my family that I put on my Mac, and have seemless access to those pics from my iPhone/iPad wherever I am will be great.
Def. consumer-based. But hey, that's where the money is.
And obviously iCloud is targeted for Apple users. Finally people can backup their entire phone for somewhat of a reasonable price. Increasing iCloud storage tiers should also hint that a 128GB iPhone is finally up in the horizon.
What if I don't want my every photo, every edit, every album to live in the cloud ?
In this day and age where storage is so cheap, why should we sacrifice internal storage for online storage ? In this time of a supposed lack of internet security and spying, why would I want to put photos of anything on the cloud.
The storage on idevices are plenty for me, and I don't want to have to worry about being automatically billed for a feature that I not only don't want, but a feature I'm against having in the first place.
If I take a picture on my phone, I want it securely only on my phone.
If I take a picture on my 3rd party camera and sync it with iphoto, I want it to live only in my Mac's iphoto library.
As I said before, internal storage is cheap, it's been cheap for a long time. There's no reason to transfer the hub of my information from something I possess to something in the cloud.
If there is no option to solely sync with only your hardware devices and not have everything load to the cloud, then this trend could spell the end of my purchasing of Apple products.
Phew
Photos for Mac looks pretty basic which is good and bad. The good is that it'll mirror Photos on iOS. It also means that Aperture 4 should be more ambitious but probably delayed until next year as well.
The current limit is a real pain.
06/02/2014 03:50 PM
I would love to have the ability to photo search from my iPhone to my iMac photo library without having to sync to this new iCloud service. Will that be possible?
I think that is what the new family sharing feature is for, but it doesn't specifically state if you need to use iCloud or not.
So, um... what about iPhoto? That's the photo app already on every mac, why do we need this?
I hate iPhoto.
I want some but not all of my photos in the cloud
I'd like it to be a sharing option, and to have smart albums that auto cloud.
Shared photo stream is half arsed. Have you tried to import 1000 photos onto your iphone from a shared photo stream? One by one?!?!
Why wouldn't you just creat a new iCloud photo stream which you can share with whomever you want, right now, and has zero size limitations?
Because the photos aren't stored in the cloud...?
If you're storing them in iCloud backup, that eats at your storage. If you're not, it's just syncing them to various devices (but no iCloud copy).
Seems like the opposite would be the case.
So, um... what about iPhoto? That's the photo app already on every mac, why do we need this?
Obviously Photo for Mac is a complete overhaul/replacement of iPhoto.