Unfortunately, today I had to use Apple Photos somewhat extensively. I needed to share a bunch of photos in several shared albums with a friend.
Here are my findings around sharing *only*. The amount of WTFs per second with regards to all other functionality is simply staggering.
- Create a new Shared album. It will appear in the list of shared albums within an unknown period of time, up to 5 minutes.
- Appe already has all my photos. That's exactly why when you mark which photos you want to share, Photos will re-upload them.
- Until all photos are re-uploaded, the album will remain empty even on your computer.
- If you share 10 photos to album X, you get "Sharing 10 photos to album X". 30 seconds later share 10 more, and you will get two "Sharing 10 photos to album X" statuses.
- Of course, if you share 10 photos, then 20 photos, then 10 again, then 300, they will all get 4 different queues even if you shared all to one album. All those queues will be processed at the same time, starving each other of upload speed.
- The person you shared your album with will be notified about the new album within an unspecified period of time. Up two several hours for some albums, it seems.
- The recipient of the album (when or if they get the album) will be immediately subscribed to "Shared album X" and "Timeline X" with no difference between the two.
- On the recipient's device both "Shared album X" and "Timeline X" will be empty for an unspecified period of time with zero indication whether or not there's any sync process going on.
Note: this is a first party app. It's also, arguably, one of the most important apps in Apple's ecosystem. It's been around for 4 years. And this is its current state.