One of the main limitations of My Photo Stream is that on mobile devices, photos are saved on iCloud’s servers for only 30 days after that, the oldest ones are deleted from the stream.

IPhoto and Aperture are also the only options for backing up My Photo Stream photos. I no longer use either application to manage my photo library (as I explain in my book “ Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a Mac”), and yet I can’t ignore them entirely, because they’re the only official ways to view those My Photo Stream photos on the Mac. Alas, both applications are being replaced by a new Photos for OS X app - sometime in “early 2015,” providing even less incentive to use the applications now (see “ Aperture’s Golden Hour,” 2 July 2014).

The whole point of My Photo Stream is to make the photos appear on all your devices automatically, but on the Mac, they can be viewed only in iPhoto or Aperture, Apple’s own photo apps.

Millions of people capture photos on their iPhones and iPads, and it’s safe to assume that a large percentage of those folks also use iCloud’s My Photo Stream, the feature for automatically copying newly taken snapshots to iCloud and making them available on other Apple devices. It’s a frustrating time to be in Apple’s consumer photography orbit. #1641: LastPass breached, Live Text aids recipe input, fix for failed MobileDeviceUpdater installs.

#1642: How to identify phishing attacks, new iPhone and iPad passcode requirements.

#1643: New Mac mini and MacBook Pro models, new second-gen HomePod, security-focused OS updates, industry layoffs.

#1644: Explaining Mastodon and the Fediverse, HomePod Software 16.3 and tvOS 16.3, GoTo breach.

#1645: AirPlay iPhone to Mac for remote video, Siri learns to restart iPhones, Apple's Q1 2023 financials.

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