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Comment by ptoomey3 | Hacker News Reader

While I voted for google photos in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18770681, I will say that apple photos is nice if you have zero need to share a library with family members. For better or worse, apple Unlike third-party uploaders, Apple photos can “cheat” and upload no matter what. That by itself makes it the most reliable for Apple ecosystem folks. That said, I’ve not had any issues in recent history with the google photos uploader.

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When you share more than 2-3 photos at once with others who have iPhones, they get an icloud link where they can not only view the photos, but one-click add them to their own photo library. Have had zero problems keeping my library consistent with my partner's, or sharing lots of family photos at once with other close family who have iPhones.

Manually sharing works ok for super casual use, but it is way too much work when you take pictures daily. Plus, you would need to share photos both directions. And, even if you do all that, which photo library is the “source of truth”? Also, it is my understanding that photos shared through apple’s photo sharing system are not original photos or videos (they are shared at a lower resolution).

I just tried out the shared album thing. I shared a photo whose original size is 3.4MB. The photo you get when you download it from the shared album on iCloud is 925KB. And, I'm pretty sure there is no checkbox you can check to prevent that ‍️. I love lots about the apple ecosystem, but their photo management/sharing system is not one of them. It boggles my mind, as lots of Apple engineers have families. But, despite that, they don't have any system for seamlessly sharing photos (or entire libraries) with family members.

I agree it's not perfect, but for myself and my family (we all have iPhones, and if you don't have an iPhone in our family, I will happily provide a refurbished one to you) it is superior to all other photo management options out there (Google might shut down Photos one day, Facebook needs no explanation, Smugmug/Flickr UX is woefully inadequate for family photo library management).

One day I hope Apple improves delta/library reconciliation, but for now, it's the best I've been able to find. It Just Works (for the most part).

Totally to each their own...there is no perfect solution for this. I do understand the the apprehension with google shutting down services, though google photos is so wildly popular it would almost be analogous to them shutting down gmail at this point. Also, one nicety with google photos is the photos are just photos in a folder structure of your choosing. If/when the service goes away you can literally just import the folder structure to the next thing.

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