I took my first digital picture in 1997. We had our second son in 2005 and by then I already had around 7,000 digital photos! By 2010 we had all four boys and we were around 25,000 pictures! Today, I have 83,143. I got my first iPhone in 2009 and that was the single reason we have so many pictures.
In 2002, Apple introduced an application called iPhoto. iPhoto was Apple’s answer to digital photo storage. At first, it held a few thousand photos. But ask digital photography grew in popularity and became the standard, Apple increased it’s storage ability. iPhoto also handled some great editing capabilities.
In 2015, iPhoto became Apple Photos, and is said to be able to hold up to an unimaginable 333,000 photos. And that number is not limited by the number of photos, but the storage space that that amount of photos uses, approximately 1 terrabyte.
The Photos app has always been available on iPhone as well. And again is limited to the storage space you have available, which isn’t much on iPhones, causing those of us who take more pictures and video to require phones with larger storage capacities.
Apple had been providing online storage for its users, but with everyone taking photos with their phones, we ran out of online storage quickly! So in 2011 Apple introduced iCloud, an online storage solution for backups, photos and videos, etc. For the first time, I was being asked to pay for online storage of my photos/videos. It was affordable, at 99¢ for 10GB of storage. Still, it was kind of clunky and had issues loading photos here and there.
In May of 2015, Google launched their version of Photos. Which was much more user friendly and just worked. The pros are as follows: Google Photos offers unlimited storage, and they offer facial recognition in videos, not just photos. Oh, and it’s FREE. One of the cons of Google Photos is that they don’t keep full resolution photos and videos. The integration with iOS is also kind of a big deal. But mostly the storing of full res photos and videos is what does it for me with Apple.
So, it’s really Google Photos or Apple iCloud Storage for Photos.
That being said, Apple Photos in iCloud can be finicky. The stars need to be aligned for it to work perfectly. Here’s the way it should work: You take a picture with your iPhone, and the picture is uploaded to the cloud where it then syncs up with all devices that you are signed into. Then come the “issues”.
- Your iCloud account is out of storage.
- One of the devices that you are signed in on is out of storage.
- Your iPhone is out of storage.
If you aren’t experiencing any of the issues above, then you’re good to go, and all will work as it should!
