It doesn't seem too long ago that many of us would take our digital cameras with us for a vacation or night out. We'd participate in the regular ritual of then taking the camera home with us, plugging it in to a computer, and comb through the dozens of snaps we'd taken to determine which ones were acceptable to share with our Facebook friends or email to loved ones.
If you're like us older millennials, you skipped the combing-through stage and uploaded everything -- no matter how poorly dressed or goofy you looked in middle school.
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For the photo-sharing types, this ritual was a part of our regular schedules. Sure, it was cumbersome and painstaking. But it was ingrained embedded and something we simply put up with.
Until it wasn't.
This is why Apple's (AAPL) -) My Photo Stream was so revolutionary. Rather than uploading photos manually, My Photo Stream, launched in 2011, allowed iPhone users to temporarily upload up to 1,000 photos at a time to their iCloud so they were accessible from any device. The service was free and seamless as long as it was enabled.
And if 1,000 photos seems excessive, you probably didn't go to high school between the years 2000-2010. Yes every one of those 858 photos taken during the girl's soccer pep rally was necessary and important.
My Photo Stream ultimately turned into iCloud Photo Library, which then became iCloud photos.
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But Apple has grown with the times, and it seems that My Photo Stream is no longer considered fundamental to Apple's bottom line. Thus it will be discontinued officially on July 26.
"As part of this transition, new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from your devices will stop one month before, on June 26, 2023," Apple said of the shutdown. "Any photos uploaded to the service before that date will remain in iCloud for 30 days from the date of upload and will be available to any of your devices where My Photo Stream is currently enabled. By July 26, 2023, there will be no photos remaining in My Photo Stream, and the service will be shut down."
And while My Photo Stream is shutting down, fear not if you still store your photos on the iCloud. iCloud Photos is still the best way to store your pictures going forward, per Apple.
"If you already have iCloud Photos enabled on all of your devices, you don't need to do anything else -- your photos are already uploaded and stored in iCloud," Apple said.
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It seems natural that Apple would offer photo storage, since the majority of us now use our cell phones as cameras. Google (GOOGL) -) offers a similar service via Google Photos, which is free for anyone up to 15 GB.
Amazon (AMZN) -) has a similar feature, aptly called Amazon Photos, which is free for users up to 5 GB. Both services can be accessed on any typical web browser and are compatible with both iOS and Android operating systems.
