Since I got my iPhone 14 three years ago, I've just been letting the photos and videos upload to iCloud and then I download them on my PC to shove on a hard drive out of the way. It's only now since I started using Proton Drive and going through them all to sort neatly into folders that I realized I've been downloading the optimized 720p versions! All my 4K60 loveliness has gone up the swanny. You'd think on the web interface, that the originals would be the ones that were downloaded by default. But no. Thank goodness I've actually caught it now before I've done any proper travelling!
Idiotic iCloud downloads!
- Thread starter ic1male
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What a nightmare, I did always find a lot of the things apple did very weird and this is certainly one of them
Soldato
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One of a few reasons why I left iCloud even though I mostly use apple devices.
I think the issue can be mitigated if I install the iCloud app on Windows. There's an option to always download the originals, I believe.
Soldato
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Have you tried iCloud for windows ….
The way I did it was to download all photos onto my Mac within the photos app and then import to your new cloud provider.
Soldato
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I really really Really wish Apple would just put another tick box beside the Optimise Photo Library that read 'Save Originals to Time Machine' and then your connected timemachine could handle the backup of the original images.
Soldato
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Then how would they sell their iCloud storeage?
Soldato
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i know what you say but they serve different purpose. there's no conflict to do that.
Soldato
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Agreed as an end user they do. To Apple one would cannibalise the other.
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Soldato
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I don't see how they would? can you explain ? One is cloud storage, the other is backup. 2 completely things. To the user, the optimise tick box makes small copies on the device, and full copies in the cloud. My imaginary tick box would do the same thing, except also store hi res on a timemachine. The photos have to go via the cloud to get onto the time machine. Apple make it very difficult to actually back up your photos.
If i beleive your argument, then it also conflicts for apple to offer Timemachine AT ALL (not just for photos), since your data is in the cloud,why should they offer a local backup?
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I might see what happens if I request a copy of all my photos from https://privacy.apple.com/
It says you will be given all the data in its original format, if it downloads as one large archive with all meta data etc then might be useful for sticking in an archive?
It says you will be given all the data in its original format, if it downloads as one large archive with all meta data etc then might be useful for sticking in an archive?