Thats exactly what I just said! (fwiw, photostream also has a 1000 photo limit)
If I'm doing local backups to my Mac I don't want to go through iCloud. Nor do I want to use iPhoto.
This is awful.
I don't care where my photos are backed up, I just don't want to manage it. However, I also refuse to use iPhoto. Because its a slow bloated piece of junk almost on the level of iTunes. I'm not going to do anything with them. I'm not going to look at them, or show them to friends or edit them. I just want them to sit there out of sight and out of mind.
iCloud was fine, but I'm not going to pay Apples outrageously offensive subscription fee. Maybe if it was one-off purchase of 99bucks for 60 gigs, but this is a yearly fee we're talking about. Subscription access to storage space you don't own. If they want people to actually use iCloud, they should make it free. Its not really that great of a benefit for anything outside of app data/preferences. I don't want my photos on iCloud, Apple wants my photos there. And they want to charge me an exorbitant fee for that "privilege." I just want my photos on my computer without using their crappy software. Something that has always been a pain. But is even more of a pain now that everything else is wireless. Imagine if the only way to sync music between your computer and phone was through iCloud. Oh but its the same thing, you'll say. You have to use an app to do that, so why do you have such a problem with using a different app to get the same functionality with photos? I would be happier if I didn't have to use iTunes either. iPhoto is also not free.
Its absurd that iCloud isn't a part of OSX. In theory having the photos go through iCloud and syncing to your desktop computer is great. But only if its a part of the OS. Its shoehorned into an embarrassingly-bad piece of software that not even my Mother would use. I just want my photos in a folder on my computer. No sluggish app front end. The only way to accomplish this is through image capture.