I currently have about 19,000 photos on my Apple iCloud account. That means a lot of pictures exist but are not actively remembered, which I suppose is kind of sad.
Apple’s Photos app, however, has a feature that takes a small step to remedy that. Much like Facebook’s similar feature, Photos pops up a picture from your Library now and then. There is even a desktop widget specifically for the purpose of showing the daily photo.
What logic?
The logic behind what pictures the Photos app surfaces is a bit more complex than Facebook’s ‘On this date’ feature. Photos seems to group photos by events, then has some kind of internal ‘interest’ ranking that it uses. I rarely, for example, get a photo of pure scenery. There are usually people or animals involved, and it usually seems to be a holiday or time away from home.
The above photo is of a time I was apparently testing a selfie stick- I think? But the best part is looking around the photo Apple selects. In the case of the above picture I found the one below from just a few days earlier.
Both of the lovely cats in that photo are gone now. Pippin died suddenly a couple of years ago, and Paru had chronic health issues including kidney failure, vomiting, and gigantic nose bleeds that led to a hard decision.
It was a memory that made me cry, but in a good way. I feel so very lucky some days to have shared a life with people like my wife and creatures like our cats. Thanks, Photos, for randomly reminding me of my good fortune.
