JJR has every right to be frustrated when Photostream won't allow users to delete a single photo. At least not yet. I am sure Apple is working on it.
I must thank Tunderhill for taking all the time to explain what the Apple Marketing department tried not to tell us. For those of us who relied on the www.apple.com/icloud web page to determine if Photostream is a good thing, we now know much better. Photostream is not the improved replacement for MobileMe Gallery which Apple will take away. iCloud is for App Developers. Anyone who rushed out last Christmas to buy new iMac / MBP, bite your knees.
Until recently, Apple was more a toy than a corporate data processing system. Photographers like Apple because of the beautiful monitors and Photoshop. But Apple is a hardware manufactures not too deeply into consumer software development. iPhoto, Garageband, iMovies are all great toys that do one little thing at a time, barely. When we play with one toy, we always find its limitations quickly and then find another toy to supplement it. Pulling music only out of a Karaoke disc is fun with Apple: MVCD / Handbreak / Quick Time / Sound Booth / iMovie... no way a PC can go through all these without a glitch! I love my Apple toy.
With more kids graduating from schools that used Macs, and as they became supervisors, managers, Mac is slowly moving into the office world. And Apple is very happy to talk so the people in this market share will consider Apple.
Unfortunately, in this case, photostream was promoted to be a big part of iCloud. We bought the idea, bait, hook, and sinker. Then, one by one, we begin to turn Photostream off. It is a great toy for the 5 year old running around with the ipad in camera mode. For the rest of us, there is no right or wrong, there are only lessons to learn.
Let us learn that next time, when Apple tells us something, we should read what they did not tell us instead of getting too excited about what they said in politically correct words. Their marketing people did a great job. We are just sold. Having trusted Apple since the Apple IIe, the first unfortunate thing that happened to us after Steve left was: Can we still trust Apple to be reliable, up front, one small step at a time? (That was what we pay the extra dollars for, wasn't it?)