Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac:

While Apple does allow you to create shared albums in iCloud Photos, it doesn’t allow a way for families to create a single library for all of their family photos or even easily give another person access to copy photos to their own library. For many people, the iPhone is their primary camera, and therefore Apple needs a way to help families unify their photo library.

Shared albums do exist, but the photos are not original quality and videos are length limited. Not the same thing as a family member seeing what I see.

Google solves this problem with something they call Partner Sharing:

You can share photos of specific people or share photos from a specific date onward. Photos will be shared automatically as they are backed up to your account.

If you read the Google tech note, you’ll see it’s not perfect, but it does allow more automated sharing of original content than Apple. And I stress the word automated.

I’d love a set it and forget it approach that let my wife’s iPhone photos make their way into my stream, giving us a single family album to search and look back on.

Nice writeup, Bradley.