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Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

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Re: Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

#161
post #101
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a free tier of photos and videos under a certain resolution which didn't count towards your storage which they're removing.

I was under the impression that was only for Pixel phone owners - I suppose I was mistaken! Although low resolution image uploads doesn't seem very useful for most people. The point of cloud storage is peace of mind to keep your data safe... and to me that implies the original photos not reduced resolution photos.

> Although low resolution image uploads doesn't seem very useful

They are still very high resolution. They're just not the original 50 MB file. It worked perfectly well for the overwhelming majority of people.

Pixel offered unlimited storage even for uncompressed photos, but that option was also discontinued a few years ago.

Re: Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

#163
post #71
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the first part of the Data Transfer Project - an initiative between major online service providers to provide an easy way to transfer data between their services.

That's interesting, and it's the first I've heard of the project. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Apple has yet released the adaptors to the open source project [1]. As much as I'm not interested in having Apple copy my photos to Google, I am very interested in scripting my own offline backups without having to make space for Photos.app to store all my photos on my laptop's SSD. Hopefully the adaptors are added t…

in the meantime, https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... has been pretty reliable for me.

Re: Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

#164

Unrelated, but this reminds me of a recent incident. A friend came over to me asking for help transferring his WhatsApp chats from his old iPhone to his new Android phone. Turns out there is no official/practical way to do that, and he lost all hos chat and media records made across years (WhatsApp is the main mode of communication here, it's like opening up your official mail inbox one day and finding it completely…

It's because Whatsapp backs up to Google Drive and iCloud respectively. I have no idea why the backup format can't be agnostic of what it's backed up on. That would make the syncing logic agnostic as well.

Maybe it is. It’s encrypted though so could be hard to check.

Re: Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

#166
post #158

Just give us a ‘download all’ button with the ability to resume in the event of a failure. RSync has been around for a long time why reinvent the wheel for every different service. Welcome to Modern tech - constantly reinventing (square) wheel

GDPR gives you this button. You can do a full data request. This was introduced for exactly this usecase, to make it possible to switch service providers. Now only Google needs to be able to read Apple's format.

Pretty sure even if Google doesn't support it explicitly, you'll have open source tools that can download + re-upload to Google.

Re: Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

#167
If Apple opened up their APIs so that data could be imported by ANY authorized third party service, that would be fantastic. This post is about a behind-closed-doors deal with Google. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see a reason to celebrate.

Re: Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

#168

Mind you, Google's free plan gives only 15GB space. Purchasing larger space requires unnecessary monthly expense. Periodic backup to hard disks seems like the only permanent solution.

Yes, because iCloud and Google Photos shouldn't be considered the only piece to a backup solution.

Re: Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

#169
post #144

It is a bit sad to see something as simple as "you can now take your photos and put them where you want" become a newsworthy article. This is yet another demonstration that Digital Feudalism is alive and well, and just like its ancestor, we need to get rid of it by empowering people to be their own self

force protocols to be open would just about do it. People would trivially write cross-service applications on top and we could have an internet where people can freely move data around. Apple and Google would be delegated to the backend and users could choose the clients they want. It's honestly so trivial and uninvasive of a regulatory matter it's ridiculous. We're stuck in the 19th century railroad industry.

> It's honestly so trivial and uninvasive of a regulatory matter it's ridiculous.

At what point do you become compelled to start transforming your web application into an open protocol?

Re: Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

#170

This article is a little weird. The title is actually "Transfer a copy of your iCloud Photos collection to another service " but then the small print says "...to Google Photos." It seems like they plan to support migrating to other services at some point but not yet? It also only allows customers from a small fraction of countries to use this, which I really don't get. Maybe those are all the places iCloud Photos and…

It seems like they plan to support migrating to other services at some point but not yet? Considering the fourth word of the second paragraph is "initially," I think you're correct — this is a work in progress. I hope that Apple will eventually allow bulk downloads of iCloud photos to the desktop. Right now you can only do 1,000 at a time, and it took me almost a week to make a local backup of my wife's iCloud photos…

You can do this with the Windows iCloud app. Just downloaded 7000 photos through it.
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