Does this still come with the required bloated and brittle metadata libraries and structure that prevents you from setting it up on a shared NAS so that your other non-Mac machines can access it?
This has always been my complaint with iPhotos, and I'm betting this is no different.
Ideally, it would manage to keep the metadata abstracted from the structure so that you could set it up however and wherever you wanted.
But unfortunately for users, their model isn't about building an open and flexible photo storage solution, but rather a solution that depends on the iCloud and the need to purchase more storage capacity.
Amazon Cloud Drive for photos won't even accept it, probably because it knows better.
They programmed it into the client to reject iPhoto libraries when you try to drag the thing over, recommending that you export every. single. picture. and uploading that instead.
There's never been any limitation preventing access to data inside the iPhoto Library. The library is simply files in directories with a database to glue it together. I've used software such as exiftool / photorec to yank data out of iPhoto libraries many times. There are also a variety of different applications that can read/write iPhoto Libraries so the database files must not be anything too special. For the Photos app the original imported photos by year / month / day / event.
Fortunately for users, their model is about building something that works transparently and seamlessly across all of their products, a feat which Apple has proven again and again people are willing to pay a little extra for. 99.8% of users think metadata is the act of meeting a child's father.
This has always been my complaint with iPhotos, and I'm betting this is no different.
Ideally, it would manage to keep the metadata abstracted from the structure so that you could set it up however and wherever you wanted.
But unfortunately for users, their model isn't about building an open and flexible photo storage solution, but rather a solution that depends on the iCloud and the need to purchase more storage capacity.