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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Aren't the photo frame companies able to issue firmware updates? Since the devices are internet-connected, it seems like they ought to be able to. According to the article, the new API "can... access... albums through the new Google Photos Picker API".

Or maybe they don't even need firmware updates, if it's all managed via the photo frame's website.

API's change, and if you make a product that uses an API, you need to be able to change with it.

If Google is somehow making it technically impossible for the photo frames to auto-update from an album, then that would be really annoying. But it doesn't sound like that?

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This new API is so bad that it is breaking Google photo albums on Android TVs!

No one wants to manually add each photo to a slideshow. Google Photos has AI that automatically makes themed albums, it works great. I point my TV at my family photos, new pictures of my family are automatically added as I take them, and then shown on my TV. That is how it is supposed to work.

This new locked down API places all the security burden on the user, and a large % of users are not going to be able to figure out the new system, and the new system is so complicated that many products are just going to give up on working altogether.

The new system, even if well intentioned, should not be rolled out, it is a huge net loss for users.

Is it a huge net loss for Google though?

I'm paying for their photo service. If their photo service gets dumbed down to become a simple file store, it makes it easier for me to migrate to a different photo storage service.

Their internet services are just a hobby. Their money comes from advertising. You're not a customer, you're livestock for the marketers. Me too, come to that.

> If Google is somehow making it technically impossible for the photo frames to auto-update from an album…

Per TFA, that's what's happening. "Instead, apps can only access photos or albums through the new Google Photos Picker API, which requires users to manually 'pick' each photo."

The picker API limits access to selected photos. It doesn’t look like there is an API for “all current and future photos from an album”, which is the problem (from integrators’ perspective)

Does it? From Google's own docs, it seems tremendously unclear.

But from the official page it says [1]:

> For example, if your asking your users to share a specific album, you could include the following text on the same page your users connect to Google Photos: "Connect to Google Photos, then search for the album you want to share."

This suggests that users are able to share a specific album that shares all photos within, without having to individually select.

It's hard to see why Google would take away the ability to share all photos in an album, when that's such a common use case.

If they have removed that, it's incredibly dumb. I just don't see anything concrete that they have? I'd love to see proof one way or another. Does anyone have access to the picker interface itself? Does it allow you to select an album directly?

[1] https://developers.google.com/photos/picker/guides/picking-e...

No, if you look at the screenshots on that page it's clear that when they mention albums, they're only talking about the search experience, not the picking experience:

https://developers.google.com/static/photos/images/picker-pi...

They also clarify this in the documentation: "Albums, favorites, and other common photos categories are not show [sic] directly. Users can search for photos using various criteria, such as keywords, dates, locations, and album titles"

The user can search for album names, but only the images from those albums are shown, and users can only select individual images. In the screenshots, you can also see that it shows that you can only select up to 2000 images. And you can see in the docs that only Image, Video and Motion type files are returned—there's no album reference that you can grab, and the URLs for these files expire after 60 minutes: https://developers.google.com/photos/picker/guides/media-ite...

It's still not 100% clear to me, but I definitely see what you're saying. I know there's no album reference, but it seems entirely possible that Image files returned are all from a specific album, without having to choose them one-by-one. That seems entirely consistent with the API, the only question is the actual Picker interface.

If Google really has removed the ability to share all photos from a picked album, that's so idiotic I just don't get it. I don't see what possible benefit there is to security or to Google here. Why would Google screw over users for no reason at all? Companies generally remove features for a strategic reason. They don't upset consumers just for the fun of it.

Also, their blog post [1] clearly states, emphasis mine:

"The Picker API offers a secure and intuitive way for users to search for and select photos and albums through a seamless integration with the Google Photos app."

Does anyone have a link to the actual picker in action? And if it's missing selecting an album, is this intentional or an oversight that will be quickly corrected?

[1] https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-photos-picker-ap...

Did you see the section of the doc I quoted that said albums wouldn't be shown to the user? I think that makes it clear that it's by design

Yeah but it directly contradicts where they say you can select albums. That's why it's confusing and unclear.

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