Delete Photos Just Off iPhone, Not iCloud

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.

if i delete photos in icloud ... how can i retore it??

A deletion is a change.

iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

Just saying.

iCloud photos works exactly as Apple describe it.

helpful. thank you

Could you please tell us what it does that isn't like Apple says?

And what if you already have photos on the phone that you want to save, but want to take off the phone to make room for more?

No need to do any of that if you have photo stream enabled.