Anyone using Apple iCloud storage for family photos and videos along with older content taken on non iOS devices

Apple cloud storage is just storage. It doesn't have any AI or organizational features on its own. I have it and use it, mostly for syncing documents. I don't bother uploading photos. I have all my data including photos backed up in triplicate to external hard drives, one hourly with Time Machine, another nightly with SuperDuper, and a third is kept away from the house in case the house burns down.

I know one person with the 2TB plan but you also can't beat Google Photos unlimited storage at high quality.

FrostyWinnipeg wrote: ↑ I know one person with the 2TB plan but you also can't beat Google Photos unlimited storage at high quality.

I k ow but I want it to play nice with my iPhone and iOS devices and integrate seamlessly.

Kiraly wrote: ↑ Apple cloud storage is just storage. It doesn't have any AI or organizational features on its own. I have it and use it, mostly for syncing documents. I don't bother uploading photos. I have all my data including photos backed up in triplicate to external hard drives, one hourly with Time Machine, another nightly with SuperDuper, and a third is kept away from the house in case the house burns down.

I read that iCloud photos user your iCloud storage, so I’m assuming there is a way to upload all these old photos and videos in to a photo and video stream.

Hopefully someone that went though this can provide feedback.

Rockstead wrote: ↑ I k ow but I want it to play nice with my iPhone and iOS devices and integrate seamlessly.

google photos integrates with iphone... It can do autobackup and such and you can access it from anywhere...

Rockstead wrote: ↑ I read that iCloud photos user your iCloud storage, so I’m assuming there is a way to upload all these old photos and videos in to a photo and video stream.

Hopefully someone that went though this can provide feedback.

Yes photos is part of storage.

Rockstead wrote: ↑ I read that iCloud photos user your iCloud storage, so I’m assuming there is a way to upload all these old photos and videos in to a photo and video stream.

Hopefully someone that went though this can provide feedback.

It sounds like you're looking for a combination photo sharing system and photo backup system. I'd consider two separate apps or regimens for these two distinct purposes. You can never have too many backups. You mention iOS devices, but do you also have a Mac?

Rockstead wrote: ↑ I’m tired of living in fear of losing all my old photos and videos, I’ve got a synology nas that holds about 1TB of old photos and videos.

I see Apple has plans of 2TB of storage for about 12USD/month.

I’m sure there are others in the same boat and I wanted to see if the Apple cloud storage met your needs.

I want to be able to store photos and videos without losing quality and to be able to provide family and friends with links to content even if they are not an IOS user.

I’m hoping the Apple cloud storage has soon good AI features that can analyze my photos and automatically sort them by person and stuff like that.

It needs to play nice with IOS as the whole family uses IOS devices.

If you want album and sharing, you would have to import your photos via Apple photos On an Apple device. Once they’re in Apple photos, you’ll get the Automatic face detection and memory Generation (Auto video collage), and easy sharing. You can also import non iPhone photos and videos too via web client or a Mac. Doing it via iOS can be done but more trouble than its worth.

I wouldn’t really consider that a backup either since deleting the image on one device will delete it everywhere.

For backup, if you store it on iCloud Drive which will also be shareable (but you won’t have the photo features), As others have mentioned, you’ll be storing the same photo twice at that point so whether you can consider that a backup is up to you.

I use Apple services for the final presentation of my photos. Full backups I still do manually on my NAS but I still need to find a proper offsite backup service.