When you use "My Photo Stream" to sync photos between devices, there will be a few complications that you really don't want to work around. For instance, if you take a photo on the iPhone, it will show up on your iPad and Mac automatically. However, if you delete the photo from the iPad, it will the be deleted from the Photo Stream on all other devices. This does not delete the original photo from the iPhone, but it does delete the photo from the Mac. But there's a snag with what I just said.

At some point in time during all the updates from Apple, if you have not logged out of your Apple ID on ALL devices and then logged back in, you may discover that you can't delete a photo from a device that was sync'ed using Photo Stream - and you can't even edit it without creating a duplicate. The cure for this is to log out of your Apple ID on ALL devices and log back in. When you do this, all photos on any device that were sync'ed with Photo Stream will be deleted (you will be given the option to keep other items, like notes and calendar information).

Now for the good part. Once you stop using My Photo Stream to sync photos between devices, you can use AirDrop to transfer photos between devices. And what's even better is that the original (creation) date of the photos are retained. No other method of copying photos retains the creation date.

The bad news for some people is that you have to have a new enough iPhone/iPad that allows you to use AirDrop. Check out "How to use AirDrop with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch" in support.apple.com.

John R Carter, Sr.