Apple iCloud

Glowpun · Nov 13, 2016

oh gee, I am peeved.

I had 800 photos on my iPhone. I decided to transfer them all to the iCloud. It took a lot of time and help from the Apple people to do this.

However, I noticed when I got into the photo part of the iCloud that, except for one pic, all the images there were from 12-21-15 onward. This means except for one pic, none of the pics taken prior to 12-21-15 are on the iCloud. Meanwhile, I had transferred pictures from my iMac to the iPhone in order to get those pics onto iCloud.

The result was that the pictures from the iMac are also now on the iPhone but none of the images taken previously on the iPhone were to be found on the iPhone, other than those after 12-21-15.

Question: Would anyone know what happened to the iPhone images prior to 12-21-15? Were they really uploaded to the iCloud or what became of those iPhone pictures prior to 12-21-15? That will be a crying shame if those pics are now lost. Damn!

PeteEU · Nov 14, 2016

First off.. dont use iCloud, it sucks! So that was your first mistake.

Secondly.. not sure from your description what went on. Your Mac and your iPhone should be connected. Which means, if iCloud is activated on your phone and on your iMac, then your photos should be viewable on both devices as soon as they have synced with iCloud. So no need to transfer your pics from your iMac to your phone, as the pictures on your iMac should (at least in theory) be in your iCloud.. if set up correctly.

Thirdly, your question. No clue..as I stated, iCloud sucks. Over the years it has been full of bugs, including a deletion bug. But as I said, if the photos in question are on your iMac, then they should be in your iCloud if you have that feature activated.

iCloud has been the one of the worst products from Apple for years, which is why they are presently rebuilding the whole system from the ground up. As a PC user, you cant really access correctly your iCloud account via the web.. well it does not display accurately what is on it.. like Contacts or your documents or photos. Of course there is an app to install to make it work better, but it rarely does.. and any PC user, knows installing an Apple program on a PC is a death sentence for that PC.

My recommendation. Use Google Photos. It is an app you can get on your phone, and all you need is a Google account. Not only is it superior to the Apple photos app (they actually stole most of the Google photos app in their latest update.. Apple that is), but it will upload any and all photos to the cloud and you have unlimited space (unlike iCloud). To view them on your iMac, it is as easy as going to photos.google.com and logging in. There is also an app to upload directly from your iMac if that is what you want. A bonus is of course, that if you one day decide that you have had enough of Apple, then switching to Android will be that much easier. I also recommend that you add your google account to your iPhone so that it backs up your contacts... iCloud aint 100% on that front either.

Glowpun · Nov 14, 2016

PeteEU said:
First off.. dont use iCloud, it sucks! So that was your first mistake.

Secondly.. not sure from your description what went on. Your Mac and your iPhone should be connected. Which means, if iCloud is activated on your phone and on your iMac, then your photos should be viewable on both devices as soon as they have synced with iCloud. So no need to transfer your pics from your iMac to your phone, as the pictures on your iMac should (at least in theory) be in your iCloud.. if set up correctly.

Thirdly, your question. No clue..as I stated, iCloud sucks. Over the years it has been full of bugs, including a deletion bug. But as I said, if the photos in question are on your iMac, then they should be in your iCloud if you have that feature activated.

iCloud has been the one of the worst products from Apple for years, which is why they are presently rebuilding the whole system from the ground up. As a PC user, you cant really access correctly your iCloud account via the web.. well it does not display accurately what is on it.. like Contacts or your documents or photos. Of course there is an app to install to make it work better, but it rarely does.. and any PC user, knows installing an Apple program on a PC is a death sentence for that PC.

My recommendation. Use Google Photos. It is an app you can get on your phone, and all you need is a Google account. Not only is it superior to the Apple photos app (they actually stole most of the Google photos app in their latest update.. Apple that is), but it will upload any and all photos to the cloud and you have unlimited space (unlike iCloud). To view them on your iMac, it is as easy as going to photos.google.com and logging in. There is also an app to upload directly from your iMac if that is what you want. A bonus is of course, that if you one day decide that you have had enough of Apple, then switching to Android will be that much easier. I also recommend that you add your google account to your iPhone so that it backs up your contacts... iCloud aint 100% on that front either.

F*** I wish I had this information sooner. That said, can I delete my iCloud connection without endangering the pics I already have on both the iPhone? Or could I upload what I have on Google Photos and still have the iCloud before I delete the iCloud? How does this work?

I looked at what is now on both the iPhone and ICloud. Prior to the transfer, I had 866 photos on the iPhone. Now I have 512 photos on both the IPhone and ICloud but 71 of those photos are from the iMac. That leaves some 422 photos missing. I need to add, six of the photos are prior to the 12-21-15 date. But suffice to say though that virtually all photos I have are from 12-21-15 onward.

I must have spoken with eight of their "geniuses" and no one was able to solve anything for me. It is a shame that those 422 photos are just simply gone and were records of certain events. And some were very nice photos.

My iMac was not in synch with anything, so one of their geniuses helped me to do that. I was told to plug in the phone to the Mac because this guy said you have to do this first before you can upload photos from the Mac to the Cloud. Now I have photos from and Mac on both Phone and Cloud.

One genius told me that it is possible that photos from the Phone could have been transferred to the Mac, but my search was fruitless. On the Mac I have both IPhoto and Photos. But what I was looking for was not to be found.

So bottom line: It looks like those 422 photos are now lost? What bothers me is that none of those geniuses would mention those 422 photos were lost. But...why is it that a few of the photos taken prior to 12-21-15 made it through?

PeteEU · Nov 15, 2016

Glowpun said:
F*** I wish I had this information sooner. That said, can I delete my iCloud connection without endangering the pics I already have on both the iPhone? Or could I upload what I have on Google Photos and still have the iCloud before I delete the iCloud? How does this work?

Install the Google Photos app, and give it permission to access camera and upload the photos (part of the set up). It will take time depending on your internet connection. You can check on the upload in the app or simply by going to the photos.google.com website with your login. Once done, then every time you take a photo and are on a wifi (unless you accept 3G/4G upload in the settings), the photo is uploaded to the cloud. That way, you will only lose your photos if there is a nuclear war and the google servers are hit.

I looked at what is now on both the iPhone and ICloud. Prior to the transfer, I had 866 photos on the iPhone. Now I have 512 photos on both the IPhone and ICloud but 71 of those photos are from the iMac. That leaves some 422 photos missing. I need to add, six of the photos are prior to the 12-21-15 date. But suffice to say though that virtually all photos I have are from 12-21-15 onward.

Sure sounds like they are gone. How it happened I dunno, but I do have my suspicions. But the date 12-21-15... can you remember if something significant happened to the phone on that date or around there. I can tell you there was an iOS update on the 8th December 2015 to fix "bugs".

I must have spoken with eight of their "geniuses" and no one was able to solve anything for me. It is a shame that those 422 photos are just simply gone and were records of certain events. And some were very nice photos.

I understand fully, which is why I recommend always to back up your photos to 2 different services. I use Google Photos as the primary photo backup with Microsofts One Drive as the backup of the backup (got plenty of room there at the moment). In your case I would use Google Photos as primary backup, and maybe iCloud as secondary.. or One Drive if you have enough room there. Having used Google photos for over half a decade, I have never had any problems with missing photos.

My iMac was not in synch with anything, so one of their geniuses helped me to do that. I was told to plug in the phone to the Mac because this guy said you have to do this first before you can upload photos from the Mac to the Cloud. Now I have photos from and Mac on both Phone and Cloud.

A bit too little to late as they say.

So bottom line: It looks like those 422 photos are now lost? What bothers me is that none of those geniuses would mention those 422 photos were lost. But...why is it that a few of the photos taken prior to 12-21-15 made it through?

Sadly it looks like it.