The brilliance of iCloud Photo Sharing

How often do you find yourself running low on space on your iPhone or iPad?  When that happens, do you know what to do?  Do you end up deleting apps you don't frequently use, or even worse, do you end up deleting things you do often use, but have no choice because you are constantly running out of space thanks to the great pictures and video that your new iPhone/iPad take?    Fear not, you are not alone!  Ok, you say, what are my options outside of buying a device with more internal storage?  You have options, or at least AN option.  That option is a great one, and believe it or not, it's a free option at that!  

A few years back, Apple quietly introduced something called iCloud Photo Sharing.  Perhaps you've experienced this (if you are a client of mine, you most certainly have).    On your iPhone or iPad, you get a notification that someone has invited you to their shared photo stream.  If you are in the know, you quickly accept the invitation to view the photos that have been shared with you.  No emailing, texting involved, someone simply creating a shared stream, and inviting you to join and view their photos (and even videos).  Wait you say.  Sharing pictures and videos without emailing or texting (or using Dropbox, or Shutterfly)?  Sound to good to be true?  Well it is!  Apple has given you free space in the cloud to share, are you ready for this?  Up to 500,000 pictures and videos, and wait, it gets better, FOR FREE!  Whoaaaaaaaaaa.  This can't be...Well yes it can be, and it is!  Apple has provided free space for you to create 100 shared streams (or albums), each containing up to 5000 pictures and or videos (the videos can be up to 4:59 in length, anything over will not get uploaded).  If you calculate this folks, Apple has given you space for 500,000 pictures and or videos to store and share in iCloud, FOR FREE!  I can't stress the last part enough, IT'S TOTALLY FREE!  

Why haven't you heard about this?  I wish I knew.  Short of the fact that it's never been advertised, I quietly found out about it and decided it should be shared with the masses.  

So how does one go about creating a shared stream?  It's quite easy.
From your iOS device, go to Settings > iCloud > Photos > enable iCloud Photo Sharing.  

Next, head to the Photos App.  You can choose pictures either from an Album, or the Photos tab (they are the same pics, under the Photos tab, they are sorted).  Click Select (top right), then choose your photos and or videos (remember, if you want to upload a video, it MUST be under 5 minutes in length).  This next part is crucial to remember.  You can upload up to 1000 pictures an hour, and no more than 10,000 a day.  If you go over 1000 in an hour, the uploads simply stop.  So please remember to keep that in mind.  Ok, now that you've selected your pictures and videos, tap the Do-More icon (on your iPad it's on the top left, on your iPhone it's on the bottom left, it looks like a square with an arrow out of the top).   Next, tap iCloud Photo Sharing,

The next few steps are critical.  If you have either never created a shared stream, or never been invited to a shared stream, when you do create one, you simply give that stream a name.  However if you've created or been invited and joined one, the next step is important.  What happens is that when you click iCloud Photo sharing, it wants to put those newly chosen pictures into the last Shared Album you either created or were invited to.  So you MUST then tap where it says Shared Album.  

From here you can either click the + to create a New Shared Album,  or add the pictures you've recently selected to an existing Shared Album.    If you choose to create a New Shared Album, you'll give it a name, then tap next.  

Here you have the option to share your newly created stream with other Apple device users, or not.  If you choose not to share, the stream is still shared, with any devices you own.  

So let's review a few things here:  Apple has given you free space in the iCloud for 500,000 pictures!  You can create 100 shared streams, each containing 5000 pictures and videos (videos can be up to 4:59 in length).  Crazy.  What's even better is that even though you are allowed to only create 100 shared streams, there is no limit to how many streams your friends and family can share with you.  If you have 5 people in your immediate family, each of you can have and share 100 shared streams with 5,000 pictures and videos.  That's more pictures and videos than you'll ever be able to view!  Let's not forget your friends with Apple devices, so theoretically there's endless free space for pics and videos in iCloud for you, your friends and your family!

So what are you waiting for?  Start sharing your pictures with friends, family and loved ones around the globe!  

I hope you found this blog useful, if so, please share with others who may find it helpful.  Come back shortly for part II.

The new Photos App for Mac.

I've been using the new Photos App for a few months now, here are three things that  you should know if you plan on using the new Photos App.

• If you use the iCloud Photo Library feature, which syncs all your photos across all your devices — you'll almost certainly need to buy more iCloud storage to take advantage of it.

• All the photos you take with your iPhone or import into the new Photos app are backed up to iCloud and shared seamlessly across your devices. Using it is a fantastic experience.

• If you don't want to try iCloud Photo Library, you can keep using the new Photos app as an iPhoto replacement, but you'll be stuck with the old My Photo Stream feature (and its restrictions) for syncing photos across your devices.

As simple as the new Photos App is, the devil is in the details, and there are quite a few details here. Some familiar features have moved or changed, and in classic Apple fashion, some have also been completely removed. Here are some things to be aware of.

How the new Photos App works

If you’ve been using the iCloud Photo Library beta for your iDevices (it came out with iOS 8), you’ll be familiar with how Photos for the Mac works. Rather than the "My Photo Stream" feature, which pushed 1,000 photos across your Mac and iOS devices, everything you shoot on your iPhone will be uploaded to your iCloud. Now, when you open up Photos on your Mac, you’ll see everything you've shot on your iPhone in a manner that’s almost identical to what you see in the Photos app on your iDevice — all your pics are organized by date and location. You can zoom out to a year overview or zoom in and see any particular photo or video. 

You can have every pic in the cloud...if you so desire...

Potentially the  most noteworthy feature about the new Photos app is that Apple no longer is using iCloud to simply share your photos across devices — should you  choose, you can now store every image and video you shoot on your iDevice in your iCloud. To assist you without taking up a ton of storage, Apple is also giving users the option to optimize storage on their devices. Rather than locally storing every image in full resolution or high resolution, you can choose to have the full images live in your iCloud; smaller sized, optimized images that take up less storage space will instead be displayed on your iDevices and on your Mac as well.  You can of course download the full size image at any time, if you feel so inclined. Now, if you decide on this setup, you’ll be trusting Apple to keep all the originals safe in iCloud. Thankfully, you can have it set so that the Photos app on your Mac keeps all the original, full-size images stored locally should you so choose. 

Beyond providing a much better way of organizing your photos and videos across your devices, the new Photos app for does much of what iPhoto did — allowing you can make a variety of edits, create calendars and books, use facial recognition to sort photos by the people that are in them, share them with iCloud or across some third-party services, and much much more. Almost every feature in iPhoto is available in Photos, and Apple has, thank g-d, finally fixed its very confusing cloud-syncing solutions in favor of a much simpler and smarter solution.

What’s new?

As I mentioned above, this is a completely new app with changes to both its look and feel, and how you edit photos. But there are a few new features as well.

• If you take pics with an iPhone or iPad (and who doesn't?) , there's now a way to sort between photos and videos from Apple's newer devices. This includes things like panoramics, burst shots, slow motion, and timelapse video. Now you can do it on your Mac as well.

• Apple has changed the shared Activity View to look just like it does on iOS. The difference here is that any shared albums you have with friends now show up in the main source list instead of hidden away. 

• A new auto-crop tool that looks at your photo to figure out where the horizon is, then adjusts it according to the rule of thirds. 

• A new zoomed out view for collections and years that makes thumbnails tiny. You can see what pictures are by clicking, just like how it works on your iDevice. 

• Finally, there's a new square book format if you're printing photos through Apple. 

What’s not in the new Photos App that we are used to in iPhoto?

Almost everything that exists iPhoto exists in Photos, but some features did in fact not make it. Please note, I was using a pre-release version of the Photos App, and things may be added in future releases.

• The star rating system has given way to favoriting photos with hearts.  Never fear, your existing star ratings are preserved from your old photos and accessible through by a simple search.

• iPhoto’s built-in mail tool is thankfully gone, replaced now by sending you to Yosemite’s Mail app. 

• The syncing tools for Flickr and Facebook, gone!  Replaced with the system-wide sharing tools. 

• You can no longer geotag photos, however you can see, sort, and search by where photos were taken.

How does this handle storing photos on my Mac versus iCloud Photo Library?

Either you decide to keep your pics on your Mac, or sync up everything in your Photos library with your iCloud Photo Library. Simply put, that means no selecting certain photos of events to sync up. Power users might hate that, but the feature’s been designed so you don’t have to remember to flag items. It is absolutely worth noting that even if you choose to sync your photos with iCloud Photo Library, you are still able to  keep the original files stored locally on your Mac while having your library mirrored across multiple devices.

Will I need to buy iCloud storage right away?

The new Photos App can be used without iCloud Photo Library, and thus not take up your iCloud storage. You can keep both photos and videos in the Photos app, similar to how you could with iPhoto and Aperture. You can also continue using iCloud’s Photo Stream feature, though it does not store full quality versions of your photos and won't transfer videos. Once you've upgraded to the iCloud Photo Library, your  Photo Stream as you've known it is replaced by All Photos.

If you do want to turn on iCloud Photo Library, the Photos App will provide an estimation of how much storage it will take. If that amount goes over the 5GB of free free storage, you can purchase additional storage, similar to how it's done from your iDevice. Though Apple gives you 5GB for free, you’re sharing that space with your iCloud backups, as well as files you have stored in iCloud Drive. Photos you’ve taken on your iPhone count separately from those backups. 

My sincere hope, now that Amazon has severely changed their cloud pricing, is that Apple, shortly follows suit.  In the meantime, Apple offers four choices of additional iCloud storage (which have vary in price depending on what country you’re in). In the US, at least, it’s 99 cents a month for 20GB, $3.99 a month for 200GB, $9.99 a month for 500GB, and $19.99 a month to jump to 1TB.  Amazon offers unlimited file storage for $60/month!  

Ok, so what’s the plan for iPhoto and Aperture?

Both iPhoto and aperture will live on, for now, though there will be no further developments for either. The Photos App replaces iPhoto, so your library is transferred over. Aperture users, can continue to use Aperture if they want to make more advanced edits. But those edits WILL NOT sync over to the new Photos App, and vice versa.

Do I need to do anything to my photo library on iOS, iPhoto, or Aperture?

Quite simply, no. Apple has made it very easy for you to move your iPhoto or Aperture library into Photos and preserve your edits. However, because Apple changed some of its organizational tools, some things do get lost or changed from your iPhoto or Aperture library. Star ratings get turned into hearts (or favorites), and projects are turned into albums. Some other metadata is retained but will only show up in search. You will need to search for things like color labels and flags if you used them.  If not no worries there. Also, if you’ve added any custom metadata fields to any photos in Aperture, those fields DO NOT carry over.  For iOS users, there’s nothing to do. If you’ve turned on iCloud Photo Library, all your photos and albums will show up in Photos.

Phew!  That's a basic overview of the new Photos App.  I look forward to hearing about your trials once you've made the move...

Good Luck!  And as always...Until next time...Best to you and your devices!

iCloud Essentials Part 1

Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Notes and Reminders.

iCloud has more than lived up to it's promise of being your personal contents "Master" storage location.  I've been using iCloud since it's public release in October of 2011, and only have the highest praise for it's many services.  This blog, iCloud Essentials Part 1, will cover Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Notes and Reminders.  It will be followed, in the coming weeks, by two additional blogs covering the other features.

To begin, let's start with why we need a "Master" storage option, and why that should be iCloud (for iPhone, iPad and Mac users especially, iCloud only recently opened up to non Apple users).  In the not to distant past, those of you with multiple devices probably used your computer as the "Master".  In order to get content from the computer to your device(s), you plugged the device in, and synced content through iTunes (and iPhoto).  A very manual, very un-sexy way to share content.  Fast forward to today, now we have a sleek, sexy way for all our iDevices to share content, iCloud.  

iCloud requires a user id and password.  In some cases, it will be the Apple ID you use for iTunes.  In some cases, it will be a separate account.  On your iPhone or iPad, to get to iCloud, you'll go into the Settings App, and click on the iCloud setting.  On your Mac, you'll go into System Preferences, and click the iCloud preference.  On a PC, you'll have to download the iCloud Control panel to access your iCloud content.

On your iPhone and iPad, the Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Notes and Reminder settings are quite simple.  You either switch them on (green) or leave them off (grey). 

On your Mac, it's just as simple.  You check the settings you wish to use, and leave the settings you are not using unchecked.

You'll notice in my settings, on my iPhone and Mac, I've got the Notes and Reminders settings turned off.  The reason for that is that I use other apps in their stead, so no sense having the settings turned on.

If it's not immediately obvious, you need to be signed into iCloud with the same account information across your devices.  That may seem like a no brainer, but believe me, it has happened on way more occasions than you might want to believe where people have been signed in under one account on one device, and another account on a second device.  Needless to say, those folks had an impossible time sharing their content!  By signing into iCloud with the same account information, across your devices, you have made sharing your content a breeze.  Example:  Enter a contact on your iPhone, and it will appear on all other iCloud devices.  Similarly, enter a calendar event on your Mac and it will be shared across your devices.  

I recently converted a paper using calendar client, who is also a PC, to the iCloud calendar (no names will be given, but you know who you are).  He's been hesitant to make the switch to a digital calendar, but when he saw how easy it was, he's slowly leaving that calendar book behind.

It's that easy.  Flip the switches, check the boxes and share your content seamlessly across your devices, through iCloud.  

  

iCloud Basics

Todays blog highlights the many features of iCloud.  In the coming days and weeks, I will expand on each highlighted section to provide more in-depth information to iCloud.

To start, iCloud allows device back up, restore, updating to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch as well as managing your iTunes apps, books, music, TV shows, movies, Match, and Photo Stream in the cloud.  If you don’t already know, iCloud is Apple's online content service built to make managing your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV, and your iTunes content easier and more efficient. iCloud is based in the “cloud”, which is merely a way of saying giant data centers filled with servers that you can access from your device over Wi-Fi or Cellular internet, wherever you may be, and whenever you want your content. It consists of several services that work with the apps on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and with iTunes and a handful of desktop apps on your Mac and yes, even Windows machines. Most iCloud services are free, like other “cloud” services, additional storage and services are available for purchase.

Because the vast majority of iCloud services are free, and because they work automatically and transparently in the background to backup your data and give you access to your content, no questions asked, you should absolutely use it!

Setup, backup, restore, and update your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad with iCloud

Thanks to iCloud, you no longer need to plug your iDevice your Mac or Windows PC, then go into iTunes to set it up your iDevice the first time, to keep it backed up, or to upgrade the software. All of that is done faster and more easily, over-the-air (OTA) while on a Wi-Fi network. Because routine tasks, like backups, happen automatically, there is no need to worry about forgetting them and then finding out you don't have a backup when you need it most.

iCloud Mail, Contacts, and Calendars, Bookmarks, Notes, and Reminders

iCloud includes push email, calendaring, and contact services. Push service simply  means whenever you receive an email, it's immediately made available on all your iDevices. Whenever you make or modify an appointment it shows up in your calendar on all your iDevices. Whenever you add or change contact information, that change is  reflected in the contacts on all of your iDevices. You access these services via the Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, as well as via the iCloud.com website from any desktop browser, or through popular mail, calendar, and contacts apps on your Mac or Windows PC.

iCloud will also sync Safari Bookmarks, Notes, as well as Reminders.

iTunes in the Cloud

iTunes part of iCloud lets you access content you've bought from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore, re-download it to your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and to iTunes on your Mac or Windows PC, and stream your music, movies, and TV shows to your Apple TV.

iTunes Match

iTunes Match is Apple's iCloud-based "music locker" service that allows you to store copies of all your music on Apple's servers and re-download it from any of your devices, at any time. iTunes Match isn't free, however. It comes at a price -- $24.99 a year (in the U.S.).

Documents in the Cloud

Thanks to iCloud you no longer have to fuss with traditional files and folders or worry about forgetting where you stored  a document when you go back to look for it later. For apps that support Documents in the Cloud, all you have to remember is which app (or apps) opens the type of file you want to work on. From then on, iCloud manages everything, storing any changes you make back up to the server, and pushing down those updates to every device you have logged into your account. Create a Keynote presentation on your iPad at home, get to work and it's ready and waiting for you on your iPhone, Mac or via iCloud.com.

Find my iPhone

Find my iPhone -- or Find my iPod or Find my iPad -- keeps track of your iCloud-enabled devices so you can track them down if they're lost or stolen, and even remotely message, lock, and erase it to keep your data secure.

Keep a look out for more detailed information about each of these iCloud headings in the coming weeks.  In the meantime if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out and contact me at geoff@themacmentor.com.