If you’re anxious to try, Photos, the successor to both iPhoto and Aperture, is now available as a public beta for the first time ever.
Apple released a beta version of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 that includes the first early access to the new Photos app on OS X. The public beta is available now to all registered public beta testers.
Other new additions included in OS X 10.10.3 include a new single-pane emoji scroller, racially diverse emoji, and two-factor authentication for Google. You can download it through the Mac App Store.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
9 responses to “Apple seeds first public beta of Photos app with OS X 10.10.3”
You DO have a backup of your photo library, RIGHT? RIGHT?!!!???
I was a beta tester for Yosemite, does that qualify for beta testing this app?
So was i and this beta update is downloading to my machine now.
I choose to store all my photos in the cloud but still took up more than 1GB of space on my phone.
This is a terrible piece of software and a downgrade from iPhoto, not to mention Aperture. I, like many here, have invested hundreds of hours cataloging 10s of thousands of photos in iPhoto and Aperture; rating and manually geotagging the photos and adding descriptions. These features, I wrongly assumed, would always be part of the base offering in Apple’s photo application. Now I’m told that the star rating system is gone, manual geotagging is not supported, and meta descriptions won’t be visible.
As for iCloud Photo backup, I can’t understand how anyone with a large photo library would want to use this? Unless you need 24/7 access to your collection (mine is 840GB) you’re better off backing it up to a portable hard drive (for $100). As Apple only offer a tiny 5GB free, I can see why they are pushing everyone to the cloud. It has everything to do with revenue generation. Not that that is a bad thing, it’s just that Apple have not been this blatant and tacky about it. I don’t fancy paying Apple a monthly iCloud fee for the rest of my life.
I’m incredibly disappointed with the Photos app and the way iCloud Photo Library works. Here’s why:
1. I have an iphoto library of around 120GB. I figured I’d take the plunge and buy a 200GB icloud storage plan and enjoy the luxury of having my entire photo library in the cloud and available across all my devices. Before you ask… Yes I have a backup. Several in fact.
I started uploading the library to iCloud and set my iOS devices to download only optimised versions of the images.
However after around 15GB of the library had been uploaded I found that 3.2GB of my iOS devices storage had been taken up with the optimised images that were being pushed to it. Extrapolate that out and my 120GB library will take up nearly all of my iOS storage space! I had no choice but to undo everything, and let me tell you that was a nightmare.
2. Plan B was to continue operating in the way I had with iPhoto – using My Photo Stream as a means of getting my photos onto my Mac without having to physically connect it, and then importing the photos I wanted to keep.
But no. The Photos app does not let you import from My Photo Stream. Instead, photos in your Photo Stream are sorted of “blended in” to your photo library whether you like them there or not. And if you delete a photo from within the normal photos view – even if you add them to an album – it deletes it from My Photo Stream! And conversely if you delete a photo from My Photo Stream it deletes it from any album you added it to.
So I give up. Unless something fundamental changes before public launch its just unworkable. I was hoping that once uploaded to icloud photo library the photos would take up zero storage on my iOS devices unless I view them, much like how it works with the Flickr app. How disappointed I am to find this is not the case.
You stated my view of the entire “Photos” app situation exactly. I use Dropbox & Flickr for my photo storing needs and Adobe Lightroom for editing.
Love Apple products and services though I do, the whole approach to Photo’s and the OSX and IOS apps has been deeply disappointing. Apple rolls out Photo Stream, iCloud,etc. yet here we are in March of 2015 and the Photo app is ONLY in beta?!?!
Does anyone know if this update also includes system wide gTLD’s? Up until now only Safari supports them, making it impossible to set up eg. Exchange accounts using the new gTLD’s… The filter in the accounts settings won’t let you use a gTLD…