I sent the invitation, but when she clicks on it she gets a message that she needs an Apple device. I understood that family members on PCs would be able to see my shared photo stream - how od we do this?
If your friends have an iCloud account, have them set up iCloud on their PC as explained here: https://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/pc.html and enable photo sharing.
If they don't have an iCloud account you'll have to turn on the public website option on your shared stream (see http://help.apple.com/icloud/#/mmc0cd7e99). The public website option will allow you to share a private link with your subscribers, enabling them to view them on the web from their computer browser, however they will not be able to comment on the photos or add photos to the shared stream (those features require an iCloud account).
If your friends have an iCloud account, have them set up iCloud on their PC as explained here: https://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/pc.html and enable photo sharing.
If they don't have an iCloud account you'll have to turn on the public website option on your shared stream (see http://help.apple.com/icloud/#/mmc0cd7e99). The public website option will allow you to share a private link with your subscribers, enabling them to view them on the web from their computer browser, however they will not be able to comment on the photos or add photos to the shared stream (those features require an iCloud account).
I also need to help a friend who's trying to see shared photo streams on his Windows 7 PC. We've read all the documentation and troubleshooting tips and browsed answers in these forums -- many times.
He has a working iCloud account, which we verified by logging into it on iCloud.com. We've also installed iCloud Control Panel 3.1, and that seems to be working properly.
The problem is he's stuck at accepting an invitation to a shared photo stream. Whenever he clicks the link to join, he just gets taken to a Web page that says he needs an Apple device to join a shared photo stream. Based on what we have read we had thought that he should be able to join on a PC because he has an iCloud account and a properly installed iCloud Control Panel 3.1.
We know about the public Web site option that the photo stream owners can use, but some people do not like to use this option despite the URL being supposedly unique. We'd really like to just be able to get him to join a shared stream.
Where are we going wrong?
Doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong. Perhaps signing out on the iCloud control panel, restarting the PC, then signing back in would help (if you haven't already tried this). Also, I assume you've check to be sure shared photo streams is enabled on the iCloud control panel.
It does seem that many people are having problems with photo stream on a PC. If your friend's photo stream is not working on his/her PC then shared photo streams probably won't work either. If that's the case, there's a long discussion on this here with various solutions offered that you can read through: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5356710?start=180&tstart=0. Perhaps one of these will work for your friend.
can my PC-using friends subscribe to my iCloud photo sharing stream?
