Delete Photos Just Off iPhone, Not iCloud

"And attack anyone who disagrees with me on a personal level"

It's well established that an ad hominem attack is an admission that you are wrong and you know you are wrong. If you truly believe that you are right there is no need to attack someone who disagrees with you.

It just seems worse than usual lately. Way to many of the "Anything I disagree with or don't like is bad. Anyone who disagrees with my preference is stupid. And it's not a "preference" because I know it's the only right way to do things" sort of posts. I got accused of having Stockholm Syndrome because said that I didn't think that the change in the way dictation works is a big deal.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

Perhaps a reflection of the current political climate?

Yes, I think so. This sort of behavior has always existed but it didn't used to be something one took public pride in displaying. It makes me very sad.

kaolynfromboulder wrote:

It makes no sense to offer a paid service that prohibits the user from the ability to delete data on their device. Period.

Or, to rephrase, "It makes no sense for Apple to offer a service, that while other people might find it useful, doesn't do what I want because only what I want is important".

That's what I am doing. Just disappointed that the Apple is forcing their users to go to their competitor and don't offer the ability to backup data on the cloud. iCloud team should be fired as I am sure there isn't a CEO who would be okay with this.

kaolynfromboulder wrote:

Right, and you would rather buy a storage device and NEVER be able to remove data from it as long as it is stored in iCloud. This makes total sense, lol.

iCloud is NOT a storage service. It's a syncing service. If you want a cloud-based storage service, that's what you should get. I use DropBox but there are others.

I don't use a hammer to chop wood. Both are very useful tools. However, they are not, in the vast majority of cases, interchangeable.

kaolynfromboulder wrote:

iCloud team should be fired as I am sure there isn't a CEO who would be okay with this.

There is very obviously a CEO who's okay with the way iCloud works. His name is Tim Cook.

It would be nice if the optimization feature kept at least some of the previous things you have taken a picture of as actual files because they don’t work with a lot of the apps to pull it out of the cloud and report an error. The photo app itself won’t even pull it out of the cloud in time, does it even have the common sense not to upload it to the cloud if you’re taking pictures on the mountains and you’re screwed if you want to show your friends a picture and don’t have Internet connection. Apples tactic keeping your new photos prisoner to your phone and iCloud seems like in economic tactics to force you to upgrade with a phone with more memory which is what I currently have to do but I am ready to move up to an iPhone 8+ I’m tired of regular size phones and I need more ram for the videos but I am being held hostage to my recent hobby of video recording. I honestly thought an iPhone 7 was going to be my last phone but oh well the 8 plus will be the best of a tablet and sort of a phone size

It would be nice if the optimization feature kept at least some of the previous things

Assuming you have enough space, that's exactly what it does,

and you’re screwed if you want to show your friends a picture and don’t have Internet connection.

Not sure what you are talking about, I can show my friends optimised photos without an internet connection.

By using a 3rd party cloud service such as Onedrive, Dropbox or Box, you can activate an automatic upload (or upload everything manually), then delete all contents from your phone.

I use Onedrive as a part of Office 365 that grants 1TB of space in the cloud (that can be synced with multiple devices) then I don't worry about space.

It’s a feature, not a bug: iCloud functions in such a way as to maximize the storage space one uses both on one’s phone and in iCloud. Where do you think all those Apple profits come from? And another feature: making casual users absolutely terrified of taking anything off the cloud or their devices, for fear of permanently losing it. Again, easier just to pay the $20 a month.

I couldn't agree more! Even if I had access to a computer that I would trust enough to upload pictures and videos off my iPhone to my cloud, I shouldn't have to, considering the fact that I buy extra storage every month so I can keep all my pictures or so I thought.

I too naively thought iCloud worked this way and I don't understand why it doesn't. If they can make the iPhone and the iPad surly they can fix this issue!?! I hope that Apple listens to a big portion of its consumer base when they say this is crap and fixes this issue in the future but I don't have much faith in this.

It works exactly as it was designed to, that you don't understand what it is for is hardly Apple's responsibility, LAC has already posted the documentation for it, I suggest that you read it.

If you want online non synchronous storage to keep photos in there are many choices.

Google Photos and (Amazon) Prime Photos are excellent choices, even Snapfish works light years better than the crappy iCloud. Those companies DO listen to customers. Google photos actually asks me if I want to delete photos from my iPhone and free up space, they know better than Apple that this is a real-world need. It shouldn't be the whim of a nerd developer living in his/her bubble.

I own many Apple devices and use iCloud. I just received an iPad Pro for Christmas that I want to use as a dedicated music reading device. I have stripped out unneeded apps, but have not been able to delete the photos. I have about 60k stored in iCloud and even the compressed versions that were added to my iPad Pro photo library (without my permission) take up a lot of room. How can I delete all photos from this device without touching iCloud or my other devices? This is a 32Gb iPad Pro, so I need the space. This seems ridiculously complex and very un-Apple like.