[vizzier]

> or switch to another provider

Can you though? Its been a few years since I've been on apple, but being able to get anything but icloud native support in other apps was basically non-existent. Compared to android where it gives you a plethora of choice out of the box.

[rafram]

Yes - they're already on my computer, so any full-disk backup service will back them up by default. There's an option to purge them from disk and download from iCloud on demand, but you don't need to use it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111762

[vizzier]

ah fair, I was thinking on the iphone, but in fairness this is a thread about a laptop

[fizwidget]

Even on an iPhone you can back up your library to Google Photos or other services. You just can’t do so directly through Apple’s Photos app.

[nicoburns]

It's different on mobile (iOS/Android) where individual apps need special support for cloud providers. On a mac everything is just a file for most apps, so all the cloud providers work by default.