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i went to vietnam in sept, took well over 1000 pics on my iphone and were automatically backed up to my icloud acc. i have now just purchased a 18 mnth old mac book pro and would love to be able to download those pics to my mac?? when i go to icloud it doesnt show i have any photos. when i try to enable photostream on my mac there is no icloud?? please can someone tell me how i can get pics from icloud onto my mac?

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What do you mean by "automatically backed up to iCloud"? Photostream only contains the 1000 most recent images. – jaberg Jan 30 at 16:00
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Why not sync the pictures from the Phone to the Mac using Image Capture? It's not restricted to the last 1000 pictures or the last month of images. Also, you might want to edit in to the question if you can see some / all / none of the pictures by reviewing the photo stream from an iOS device. Lastly, edit in the version of OS X since that might also be contributing to your difficulties. – bmike♦ Jan 30 at 16:26
A cloud utility, such as Plain Cloud, might let you see and move your files: addictivetips.com/mac-os/… – Wayfaring Stranger Jan 30 at 17:22

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The easiest way is to purchase iPhoto, plug your iPhone into your Mac, and import the photos into iPhoto.

You actually can't download the photos from iCloud, per se. You can, in a way, download Photostream images, if they sync over correctly, however, Photostream has a 1000 image limit, and it doesn't do well with syncing past photos taken. Instead, Photostream is more built for when you take a photo on your iPhone, or something, then it will sync that photo to all your devices, vs. syncing all previous photos.

Either way, iPhoto manages Photostream as well. When you open iPhoto you may even see the last 1000 pictures you have taken - depending on how things were set up.

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Hmm - have you considered the part where the OP stated "when i go to icloud it doesnt show i have any photos" – bmike♦ Jan 30 at 16:27
@bmike, Yes. I suppose I made assumptions considering the OP is talking more about the Mac, than the iPhone. Since there is no way as far as I know), for one to view backed up photos, or even the number of them on the Mac, it would make sense that he can't see them. It would seem logical to go to iCloud on the Mac Prefs and see the same stats that one can from an iOS device - but you can't - and I can understand why he might be confused about that point. His following question would also go with that as when you enable PS, unless you have iPhoto (or other), it doesn't do anything obvious. – bassplayer7 Jan 30 at 16:36

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