iOS 8 And Photo Stream

iOS 8 was just released today, and it's made some very serious changes to Photo Stream - it's basically killed it. Seriously, it's no longer there, and Photo Stream isn't even mentioned anymore on iOS 8's webpage. All your photos that weren't in a Camera Roll on any of your devices are gone.

Previously

Photo Stream (PS) and Camera Roll (CR) were maintained as separate, independent sets on your iPhone. You could store and delete photos from either one. I kept CR as a sort of "new" set of photos I hadn't backed up/organised yet, and PS as a recycle bin. PS was limited to 1000 photos on iOS devices, possibly more on computers.

iOS 8

What iOS 8 appears to have done:

• Delete/remove access to PS
• Transfer photos from all CRs across all devices to the new PS. Since I haven't updated my iPad yet, and it still knew what photos were on its CR when the iPad was sleeping, it appears to remember either a) what's on your CR, or b) which photos in the old PS haven't been deleted from your CR.
• new PS/CR are one and shared across all devices. Basically from the app alone, you can't tell which photo came from which device.
• Recently Added appears to be a replacement for Camera Roll, but how long photos stay in it is unknown. Recently Deleted appears to be a replacement for how I used to use Photo Stream (i.e., a recycle bin).

People (and of course Apple) are touting this as an improvement, mainly because PS is no longer limited to 1000 photos, but the huge omission is couldn't they have done this without deleting old PS photos?

Incidentally, in Settings, Photos & Camera, there's an option for Summarise Photos. I figured out what this does is either show all photos in Years or Collections view, or show photos in sets of 10 (i.e. if you have 54 photos, it shows a summary of 50)

There are some photos in my new photo whatever that weren't on any CR and survived, so it looks like even when deleting photos, Apple can't do it properly? Sigh.

Apple discussions, because Apple's discussion interface is worse than Reddit's. Seriously. I had 2 tabs open, signed in, and it wouldn't recognise me in the other tab. No, ok, I opened that discussion in the signed in tab and it STILL made me sign in! What's the difference between Follow and Bookmark? WHY IS MY LIST OF BOOKMARKS SO HARD TO FIND?
Where did photostream and Cameraroll go in iOS 8? https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6537671
iOS 8 update resulted in Photo Stream missing https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6537401

iOS 5

Updated 22 Feb 12

iCloud

• 5 GB free (per account)

• Backs up: photos, documents, apps, books, calendar, mail, messages, contacts, notes, reminders, bookmarks
• Can select individual categories to backup, tends to slow down Wi-Fi
• Does not backup (more like archive) app settings for deleted apps - can only restore entire device, not individual apps.
• Does it sync app settings (high scores) across devices?
• Cannot backup to both iCloud and computer
• How safe is my data?
• Restoring from iCloud: http://heresthethingblog.com/2011/10/18/restore-iphone-ipad-icloud-backup/ doesn't seem to be able to spot restore for now
• Need OS X Lion to use on Mac

Notifications

• Swipe down to view Notification Center
• Choose which apps are displayed in Notification Center, including weather and stocks
• For each app, decide how notifications are displayed (none, banners, alerts), badge app icon (number on app icon), whether they're shown on the lock screen

Reminders

• Like notes with a checklist
• Location based (optional)
• Date and time reminders (optional)
• Checked items go to Completed list. There is no easy way to clear this list
• View reminders by date or list

Sounds and vibration

• Custom sounds for messages, voice mail, email, sent email, tweets, calendar and reminder - fully custom - can set own ringtones!
• Programmable vibration patterns!
• For each contact you can now set custom ringtone, text and vibration

Camera

• Start camera from lock screen
• Take pictures with volume + on phone or even on earphone remote
• Display 3x3 grid when composing
• Focus lock
• Red eye correction, cropping in Photos app
• Still has the colour problem
• If you choose to, photos taken are stored in Photo Stream, across all devices. Seems to be impossible to delete photos from this for now. Photos stored for 30 days. Photos are only stored at 1920x1434 resolution. 

iMessage

• Delivery receipts
• Read receipts (if recipient allows)
• See when someone's typing
• Free, if you (both?) have Internet access
• Can tell if contact has iMessage before sending
• Some problems with multiple devices, or people stopping using iOS 5. Looks like they need to update the servers more often 
• If recipient does not have data coverage, it'll try for a few minutes, then eventually send as text message. If you know they don't have data coverage, you can hold down on your sent message and force it to send as text message.
• Send pictures and location (untested)

Safari

• Private browsing!
• Still limited to 9 tabs on iPad?
• Reading list

Newssstand

Twitter

• Post to Twitter from some apps e.g. Photos
• Does it still need a Twitter app?

Wi-Fi sync

Autocomplete phrases (under General > Keyboard) If you constantly type the same phrase, you can set up a shortcut for it (e.g. em becomes your email). I think the best part is you can reject this any time - instead of correcting automatically, the suggestion pops up like autocorrect. This means it's still possible to just type the shortcut.

Mail

• Format emails

Calendar

• New views

Video

• Video now separate app