Chuck Skoda get his list right, but he left out a few things, in my opinion. All in all, I like Photo Stream — mainly as a way to quickly see photos I’ve already sorted into albums that might not be on my iPhone. That said, I think the system needs some clarification:
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In iPhoto (and I assume Aperture), the Photo Stream is one endless set of photos. It is impossible to tell what’s been imported to iPhoto’s local library already. I would love for iPhoto to offer to delete images from the stream once they’ve been imported — just like it does when I import straight from my iPhone.
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iPhoto doesn’t make it clear that the Photo Stream is a temporary storage location. iCloud will only keep 30 days worth of photos (or 1,000 images). After that, they’re gone. Even though they looked like they were in iPhoto. I imagine some people will lose some images before they figure this out.
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Thirdly, there’s no way to view these images online. Why is there not a simple photo app at icloud.com?
Update: Go read this. Sorry!