“This spring, Apple plans to replace its 12-year-old iPhoto with a new application for Mac desktops and laptops called, simply, Photos,” Geoffrey A. Fowler writes for The Wall Street Journal. “It looks and works much like the streamlined Photos app already on the latest iPhones and iPads, and is designed to make Apple’s subscription iCloud storage more relevant in our lives.”
“Apple gave the new Photos software to developers Thursday, and says it will be a free download later this spring for people who have Macs running OS X Yosemite,” Fowler writes. “I had a chance to preview Photos for a few days on a laptop filled with photos on loan from Apple. I’m an avid photographer, but I abandoned iPhoto a few years ago because it was too slow and limited for managing and editing my large collection. From what I’ve seen so far, Photos is a significant improvement for people who stick with Apple for all their devices.”
“Using Apple’s iCloud has been rather confusing in the past, but the approach in Photos finally makes some sense. If you choose to turn it on, all of your Apple devices feed all their full-resolution photos into iCloud, making them all available over the Internet to the Photos apps on all your Apple devices,” Fowler writes. “If you’re waiting for the catch, here it is: The Photos application may be free for Mac owners, but iCloud storage isn’t. Apple whets everyone’s appetite with 5 gigabytes of storage for free, but then charges $4 per month for 200 GB, or $10 for 500 GB. And it caps out at 1 TB for $20 per month.”
“If you don’t want to store and sync your photos in the cloud — or don’t trust cloud services in general — you can still use Photos as a standalone photo organizer and editor on your Mac,” Fowler writes. “Even without the cloud connection, it’s a big step up from iPhoto’s old knobs and menus.”
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Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Photos can’t get here soon enough. iPhoto is on its last legs!