Apple Will Ditch Several User Features For Its New All-Powerful Photos App

Apple is in the midst of revamping its photo strategy across all its devices, including desktop and mobile, which means halting development on the company's ancillary photo apps like iPhoto and Aperture and focusing on a single one-size-fits-all solution, which Apple is simply calling "Photos."

While the Photos app is currently being tested by Apple's retail employees, users testing out the latest beta version of iOS 8 have begun receiving notifications about the dramatic changes coming soon to Photos, including the removal of several user features like Journals, Slideshows, and Book layouts, 9to5Mac's Michael Steeber reports.

Photo Journals, which let you organize your various life events in a digital scrapbook, were introduced as a part of the new iPhoto app for iOS back in early 2012. Slideshows was a PowerPoint-like tool for displaying your photos to others, and Books let you design and create prints, posters, and books, which could be printed out and delivered to your door in a physical book format.

Now, it looks like all of these features will be unavailable for users of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, considering how Apple's link to those tools is currently dead.

It's not clear if Apple plans to rebrand these features for the grand release of the Photos app early next year, or if it's eliminating these tools from the platform entirely. We've reached out to the company and we'll update this story if we learn more.