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Pre-Roll: Zocdoc
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Zocdoc
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This episode of the Maccast is brought to you by Zocdoc, more on them later in the show.
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Opening
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News
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Apple’s Vision Pro
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Has an M2 processor for all the visionOS and computing tasks and a separate new R1 chip for managing and processing all the sensor data
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Packed with sensors
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3D camera system
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Has amazing eye tracking and uses voice and hand gestures for other control
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Incredibly accurate and subtle.
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Dual 4K displays (one for each eye) with 23 million pixels
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Uses a custom micro-OLED display system from Sony
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If you wear glasses you’ll need to get and purchase additionally magnetically attached prescription lenses from Zeiss
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Gurman is guess the additional cost to be $300-600 a pair
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Also, Apple notes “not all prescriptions are supported.”
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Spacial Audio based on the 3D scan of your environment, Apple calls it audio raytracing
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Automatically unlocks when you wear it using iris scan technology Apple is calling OpticID
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Set-up process for scanning your face (Persona) and ears (spatial audio) and eyes for OpticID
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“Persona” is your 3D life like avatar for FaceTime
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Also will have “Spatial Personas” that breakout of the square background
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Headbands and “Light Seal” are swappable, there will be a “fitting” process at Apple Stores (and I assume an app or something for online?)
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Curved OLED display on from for EyeSight
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less creepy than I thought, but still a bit weird?
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Battery pack w/ 2-hour battery life. Magnetically attached with pass through USB-C (can be tethered to mains)
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It’s “spatial” computing and “machine learning”, not AR or VR or AI
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Digital crown to control the amount of immersiveness
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One experience is using apps on “virtual” displays in your environment. You can also use a Mac keyboard and mouse or trackpad and one 4K Mac “Virtual” display
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Priced starting at $3,499 and available “early next year” in the US only.
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Maybe a more affordable version by 2025?
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Use a lower CPU, like “M1”?
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Less sensors and lower spec display.
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No built-in audio
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What is “less” expensive from $3500?
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Apple has given 30-minute guided demos to a number of media and the impressions are stellar almost across the board.
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The biggest downside, and I agree, is Apple’s confusing marketing on how this will keep you “connected” and “engaged” with others.
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I’m just not buying the idea that I won’t take this off to engage and spend time with family and friends
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This is going to be amazing for solo experiences or remote work.
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Maybe you don’t remove it on a plane when the attendant come by with your drink?
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It’s about the developers…
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Apple has amazing tools and reportedly many existing SwiftUI based apps will work as is and can be enhanced with VisionOS features fairly easily
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There was a USB “dongle” attached to the right side (battery goes on left) in one of the WWDC videos
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And the entertainment?
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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is reportedly being shot in Apple's Spatial Video format
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Availability might be limited
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Apple only expecting to sell maybe 100K in the first year
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Sony has limited capacity for the displays. Estimated by the Elec to be about 400K units (800K one for each eye) in 2023
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A 9ti5 Mac reader poll said 1/3 of their readers said they’d get a Vision Pro
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Other WWDC stuff
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New OSes and Features
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macOS Sonoma
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Drops support for most older Intel machines.
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Supports basically 2018 and later Macs (2017 Mac Pro)
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Some features, like React with your hands, Game Mode, and Presenter Overlay not supported on Intel Macs
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Interactive widgets that can now be pulled onto the desktop
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More for developers, but there is a Game Porting Tool for Windows games that includes a way to translate DirectX 12 into Metal 3, also Game Mode (Games get highest priority on the CPU and GPU)
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Siri with drop the “Hey” requirement and allow more commands to be strung together
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Not supported on Intel Macs
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iOS 17 and iPadOS 17
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New “Standby” mode when off and in landscape and connected to power
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Have a clock and informational interactive widgets displayed
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Basically operates as a home hub
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Can now share AirTags with other users
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Custom contact “cards”
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Work a lot like custom lock screens, but for yourself
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Apple adds phone “donking” with NameDrop
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An extension of AirDrop that just requires bringing two iPhone’s near each other to exchange info
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Can use it to share contacts, start SharePlay sessions, or share other data
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NameDrop is compatible with iPhones running ‌iOS 17‌ and support coming to Apple Watch models "later this year."
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They also will allow you to start an AirDrop and then finish later over the internet (but not at launch)
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Improved autocorrect, we’ll ducking see.
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Multiple timers
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Support for external webcams and mics in iPadOS 17 using “DriverKit”
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New accessibility feature called “Personalized Voice” Can go through a process to create a voice that sounds like you.
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watchOS 10
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tvOS 17
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FaceTime on Apple TV using Continuity Camera and your iPhone
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Journal arrives “later this year”.
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New Macs
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15-inch MacBook Air
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M2 Pro and M2 Max
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Same design as the 13-inch
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6-speaker sound system, vs 4 in the 13-inch
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iFixit in their teardown basically noted a bigger battery and redesigned speaker layout and not much else vs the 13-inch model.
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M2 Mac Studio
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Same design.
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M2 Max and new M2 Ultra
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New Mac Pro, sort of.
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Exact same external case and deign as the existing Mac Pro
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M2 Mac Ultra
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24-core CPU with 16 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores
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60-core GPU
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64GB RAM, configure up to 192GB
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Comes standard with 1TB of SSD storage, upgradeable to 8TB
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They also have SSD upgrade kits that can be purchased and added later
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Do replace any existing SSD
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Six full-length PCI Express gen 4 slots and One half-length x4 PCI Express gen 3 slot with Apple I/O card installed
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You can not add GPU cards though
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Sponsor: Zocdoc
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Sponsor: SimpliSafe
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SimpliSafe
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Feedback, commentary, opinions
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Rotten Apples
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I just noticed something recently when browsing for a movie to watch on Apple TV+
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Apple seems to conveniently leave the Rotten Tomatoes ratings off the listings for their own Movies.
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Seems like TV shows across the board don’t get Rotten Tomatoes ratings
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So a case of Apple controlling their own narrative I guess, but still…
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I’m also curious why they haven’t added ratings for TV shows, even if just the non-Apple ones.
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Is HomeKit languishing?
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Email from Vince who has encountered some frustration with HomeKit, specifically with automations and lack of support or documentation
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Seems like Apple has not, in recent years, dedicated many development resources to HomeKit, outside of adding Matter support which honestly hasn’t seemed to change much.
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I know a number of people seem to think the Home app is lacking, though I personally have found it fine.
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I have to be honest and say I have never done much with automation and HomeKit and maybe that’s why I have not found issues with it.
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My biggest negative experience with it has been unsupported devices, which I often handled with HomeBridge and if I ever need to “rebuild” it and reconnect all my devices. My LifeX bulbs had the HomeKit codes just on a pamphlet (not printed on the bulb), so matching up which bulb went to which code was a PITA
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For Vince:
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Installation and troubleshooting documentation is extremely light and Apple’s support is next to nothing
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Automation, rules I have set up do not consistently turn on or turn off my devices as expected.
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I generally found time base rules to work fine
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Geolocation based rules always were “spotty” for me.
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I do feel like Matter has brought more types of devices in the past year? I have not really been expanding my personal Home automation, so I don’t know if any of the new support is any good.
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So is Apple serious about evolving HomeKit?
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I think this is a fair question especially since it seemed to get very little love at WWDC
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Do you know of any resources that may be available to user trying to implement an Apple HomeKit  home automation environment?
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The [HomeKit Insider Podcast](https://appleinsider.com/podcast/homekit-insider)
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[HDTV Podcast](https://www.htguys.com/)
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Life after PhotoStream
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We discussed last time that Apple is shutting down it PhotoStream service and recommending users move to iCloud Photo Library
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I personally have been an iCloud Photo Library users for a few year now and I love it.
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Apparently there are number of folks in the community that manage their photos differently on different devices and simply turning on iCloud Photo library seems to possibly cause some issues
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Jeri has several devices, MacBook and iMac along with an iPad Air and iPad mini. Jeri managed photos on each device separately and had some crossover in album names
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To make things worse, some albums has some of the same photos, but not all albums had all the same photos
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When Jeri turned on iCloud photo library for all devices it create single albums, but some albums ended up with duplicate photos, up to seven duplicates in some cases. Ugh.
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Patricia was looking for advice in migrating away as well
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She has iCloud Photos active on her iPhone (9000+ photos), but not on her iPad (7200 photos) or on her iMac
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She AirDrops photos to her iPad from the iPhone to organize into albums
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On the Mac she doe snot want to use iCloud and backs up to hard drives instead.
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The photos and albums differ between her phone and iPad and she wants to know what happens if she activates iCloud on both devices.
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I’d imagine, if you might run into some of the albums with duplicate issues the Jeri had
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I’ve discussed this before, but here is my recommendation for using iCloud Photo Library
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When setting it up choose one device or Mac to be the “main” library that will store a hard copy of all your Photos
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I would recommend this be a Mac since that will likely have the most available storage, but I guess it could be an iPad or iPhone depending on the size of your library
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Whatever device you choose I would also recommend you have a way to backup it’s Library (remember I personally do not consider iCloud a “backup”)
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If it’s an iOS device I guess you could use a tool like [iMazing](https://imazing.com/) to back to Mac and then backup that backup to an external drive, Time Machine, and / or off site storage.
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On the “main” device, make sure to set it up to “Download Originals"
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On Mac, Photos > Settings > iCloud. Check “Download Originals to this Mac”
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On iOS. Settings > Photos > Download and Keep Originals
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Then any other devices and be set to “optimize” where originals are on your Main Device and in iCloud, but only on the Optimized device “on demand”.
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If you open a photo on an optimized device or take a photos on that device it will have the “downloaded” original as long as there is space. It would also be uploaded to iCloud and downloaded to your main device
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If you run into issue with duplicates…
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You can use Photos new “Duplicates” album to clean things up.
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It can take a while after the first time you enable iCloud Photos for it to get built
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“Duplicates are classified both as exact copies that may have different metadata, as well as photos that appear to be the same, but may have unique resolutions, file formats, or other slight differences.”
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“The selected items appear to be the same, but may have unique resolutions, file formats, or other slight differences. Merging will keep one version of each duplicate set that combines the highest quality and relevant data, and move the rest to Recently Deleted.”
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If you have an older version of Photos you can try a tool like [Gemini II](https://gemini.macpaw.com/duplicate-finder-1-2) from MacPaw
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Almost needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway… before enabling iCloud Photo Library for the first time or on any device make sure you have a full backup of the existing photos in case something goes wrong.
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Closing
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