Fantastic Friday Read: “Apple Music Launches on Xbox and Windows Photos Adds iCloud Photo Library Support”
As somebody who supports about 50% Mac and 50% Windows 11 PCs at this point I think this is a pretty big deal, particularly the iCloud Photo Library support in the Windows Photo app. Most of my Windows users are iPhone users to be honest so they don’t get some of the cooler Android-Windows integration that my iPhone-Mac using coworkers get. Also, ever since HEIC became the default file format on iPhones getting photos from the iPhone to Windows PC can be frustrating for a lot of people because it can be buggy. Having iCloud Photos directly in the photos app is going to be big for a lot of my coworkers who do use their phones to take photos for work posters, website photos, scan documents, etc.
Also, I am very happy that in the spring I will not have to support iTunes anymore. I can just point people to Apple Music or Spotify in the Windows Store. These versions of the app are firewalled off from the rest of Windows and don’t install a million things like iTunes did in the past to clutter up the PC. I just hope the performance is better than the battleship that is iTunes, but the bar is not very high at this point so I think any speed improvement will be an improvement. I think that Apple Music and TV coming to Xbox is great as well since loads of people do use their game consoles as streaming boxes. They are often significantly more powerful than the built-in TV apps and therefore a better experience if you can handle controlling it with a controller or are will to pay $30 for a remote for your console, which I highly recommend.
MacStories has a good write-up on it and helpful preview images to show off how it works. If you’re running Windows 11 you can get the new Photos app in the Insider preview if you’re brave. If not you’ll be waiting a couple of months for it, spring if I had to guess.
