We already told you that Apple has a photo-based social component called Photo Stream up its sleeve and now glimpses of this feature are appearing in customer’s iPhones. 9to5mac reader Mario Piombo spotted references to Photo Stream albums in his iOS 4.3 iPhone 4. The references are hidden from the user’s plain view of Photos.app and were discovered via a third-party application, which allows the user to select photos from their library for editing.
It looks like users will be able to setup Photo Stream albums in Photos.app just like they can make playlists of songs in iPod.app. These Photo Stream albums will then be able to be streamed to specified groups of people like we detailed back in January:
Basically, Photo Stream will be the easiest way to share photos taken or stored on your iPhone with your friends. No need to post them online – via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. – just stream the albums you choose to your family and friend’s photos.app. An older version of iPhoto for Mac included a similar feature called Photocast. Photocast allowed a user to send a photo album to another user. That photo album would then appear as an album in the friend or family member’s iPhoto library. We’re thinking Apple is going to be doing the same thing with Photo Stream.
