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Photo Storage Service 'Ever' Shutting Down and Deleting All Photos and Videos on August 31
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Exactly. But seeing a friend lose everything in a house fire, I like cloud options to back up my backups. And print out some pictures, too, just in case AI reaches sentience and gets petty!
platform too redundant with nothing compelling to offer
just like other dot com sites
too much noise and clutter
just like other dot com sites
too much noise and clutter
Are there any good "name brand" alternatives to iCloud Photos?
Google Photos is no good; they don't provide an automatic way to keep a synced local copy of your data. (They used to, but turned it off for some reason.)
I just wonder what the alternatives are these days. So far iCloud Photos is great but we never know if that may change in the future, like Google Photos did.
Google Photos is no good; they don't provide an automatic way to keep a synced local copy of your data. (They used to, but turned it off for some reason.)
I just wonder what the alternatives are these days. So far iCloud Photos is great but we never know if that may change in the future, like Google Photos did.
As I saw the title of this thread, I was expecting this small company to file an (anti-competitive) lawsuit against Apple and Google. They got squeezed out by the big boys, so why not jump on the lawsuit bandwagon?
Well, Apple's Time Machine was actually a good backup, it was easy too. Your only initial investment was to buy a good-sized and reliable external HD. That external drive was essentially "your own cloud server".
It used to be that Apple even sold multi-terrabyte Airport routers with built-in Time Machine backup, but no longer. So who knows if Apple is no longer interested in pushing Time Machine technology. We certainly have not heard anything new or any new development on it.
Even the "big boys" are not necessarily going to keep your data forever.
Anyone remember iDisk? If you had data on your iDisk that you never copied somewhere else, do you think it's still there?
What happens when "iCloud Photos" changes their pricing model, some people can't afford the change and their data is deleted? What happens if they simply change the way the apps work in such a way that is user hostile?
Try to imagine this concept of photo storage but not on the Internet. Imagine if there was a company that opened up a little shop with a bunch of storage crates. For so much per month, we'll hold your photos in these crates "forever". Now, five years later, the place comes on financial hardship (maybe they can't compete with U-Haul self-storage?) and has to go out of business. If you don't go get your photos, they'll be tossed out.
The lesson here is that the only truly safe way to store precious irreplaceable memories, digital or not, is to store them yourself. Digital makes it very easy to make multiple copies, so you can store a copy on site, a copy (or maybe even multiple copies, on different services) in the cloud, and another copy at a family member's place. You don't have to not use cloud services, but make sure you are never entrusting all of your photos to just one cloud service. While digital data does require a little more maintenance (e.g. verifying that the hard drive you put at Grandma's still actually spins up after three years of sitting idle) arguably digital data is even easier to preserve long-term since it can be so easily duplicated. I still have data that originated on 5.25" floppies safely stored in multiple places.
Your photos are irreplaceable memories. Take good care of them, don't depend on someone else to.
Anyone remember iDisk? If you had data on your iDisk that you never copied somewhere else, do you think it's still there?
What happens when "iCloud Photos" changes their pricing model, some people can't afford the change and their data is deleted? What happens if they simply change the way the apps work in such a way that is user hostile?
Try to imagine this concept of photo storage but not on the Internet. Imagine if there was a company that opened up a little shop with a bunch of storage crates. For so much per month, we'll hold your photos in these crates "forever". Now, five years later, the place comes on financial hardship (maybe they can't compete with U-Haul self-storage?) and has to go out of business. If you don't go get your photos, they'll be tossed out.
The lesson here is that the only truly safe way to store precious irreplaceable memories, digital or not, is to store them yourself. Digital makes it very easy to make multiple copies, so you can store a copy on site, a copy (or maybe even multiple copies, on different services) in the cloud, and another copy at a family member's place. You don't have to not use cloud services, but make sure you are never entrusting all of your photos to just one cloud service. While digital data does require a little more maintenance (e.g. verifying that the hard drive you put at Grandma's still actually spins up after three years of sitting idle) arguably digital data is even easier to preserve long-term since it can be so easily duplicated. I still have data that originated on 5.25" floppies safely stored in multiple places.
Your photos are irreplaceable memories. Take good care of them, don't depend on someone else to.
Great answer @avigalante – perhaps the only serious one on here.
All extremely true.
However they probably also didn't differentiate their offering enough from the incumbents to warrant their own existence. It's inspiring they were able to sustain for 7 years and still poise themselves as simply 'photos/memories in the cloud'. There are some definite additional opportunities in this space outside of that, but without being able to identify those and capture them – you are left with a ticking timebomb which looks like finally went off.
It should be illegal to only provide 7 days to access to your data before shutting down the service. That’s crazy.
Treat any single copy of your data as if it can go away at any time without warning.
This includes local hard disks, cloud providers, NAS systems, etc...
If you have only one copy of your data, it is at risk, no matter where it is. Everyone should be aware of this.
Stick with big brands like iCloud and google drive and Lightroom cloud for safe keeping.
wait. Scratch the Lightroom thing.
wait. Scratch the Lightroom thing.
That's a good point. I feel like capitalism is kind of an outdated model when trying to apply it to modern society. Hundreds of years ago businesses were much smaller by comparison, especially at the local level. You didn't need worldwide infrastructure and manpower. A company failed if it wasn't good, not because it couldn't scale or faced roadblocks at every point due to massive conglomerates blocking them. When you're talking about companies that are getting large enough to not even just buy countries but entire blocks of countries, how do you compete against that? The odds are heavily stacked against you from day one. That's not capitalism any more—it's something much worse.
It's true what you say. The lack of competition stifles innovation. But consider this:
* Ever creates a photo storage service 7 or 8 years ago
* Other photo services already exist. Ever might have been asked why they are doing this.
* Ever believes they can differentiate, so they plow ahead
* Ever builds what is essentially a "feature" of a larger ecosystem though those might not be as rich, but could eventually catch up
* Ever encounters a trust and adoption issue; i.e. why would I want to use Ever instead of iCloud?
* Ever could not sell their service to larger player
* Ever shuts down
Sometimes it's about innovating well, so well that a larger company decides to make your service a feature, either through acquisition or in-house. And sometimes a failure to innovate and grow adoption is just that.
Advice to anyone building a new service: Is it truly unique? Does it already exist? Are you trying to build something better than what is out there? How easy is it for a larger company to build the same service and would it make sense for them to do so?
Cloud services provide a great point of entry so at least building a new service doesn't need as much capital as before. That at least allows a startup to experiment and fail faster.
Let me know if I'm just talking out of my ass here...
And this is why you never rely on anyone else to back your stuff up. Be it iCloud, Google, AWS, Backblaze, Dropbox.
You can't trust thet won't shut down and/or lose your data some day.
You can't trust thet won't shut down and/or lose your data some day.
Whats crazy is people only having their data on a 3rd parties drives somewhere else.
Exactly. Your data, your responsibility. It is just too bad that there are TONS of people around using those so-called “2TB/5TB” online storage and that storage only, thinking that is fairly safe. I even saw people arguing the “maintenance cost” between personally storing data and storing data in the cloud. They must have never seen those small cloud storage providers shut down I think.
Neither government regulators or tech industry lawyers ever thought of these things in advance.
The "laws of the land" are still decades behind current technological advances.
One more reason I believe in owning my own music, movies, pictures. Besides quality, I just don’t trust putting my stuff in the “cloud” or “streaming” it. I’m going to cherish it and then my kids are when I’m gone.
No one can be sure that even Google will be here for ever!
Safest option for consumers is to buy two or three external USB-drives to duplicate their images and documents, and stor them at different relatives houses.
Cloud-crap can be hacked, your pictures scattered around the world, or deleted by accident, or deleted by bankrupcy, or, or....
Safest option for consumers is to buy two or three external USB-drives to duplicate their images and documents, and stor them at different relatives houses.
Cloud-crap can be hacked, your pictures scattered around the world, or deleted by accident, or deleted by bankrupcy, or, or....
I still use a 2TB (huge at the time) Airport TimeCapsule both as my router and Time Machine back up. They were expensive, but looking back maybe not so much because they do work.
A decade later mine still works (used it to transfer the latest backup to a new iMac), the connection never drops even with tons of phones, laptops, AppleTVs, gadgets and PCs of the people in the house connected to it.
I even got a bit of a faster router but it’s less reliable, don’t need the faster WiFi anyways for my current internet connection.
Would have been great if Apple continued pushing forward this product with new faster better internals and updated WiFi connectivity because for what it’s meant to do, it has done it perfectly well for years and years personally.
Maybe this is something that can be put and blamed on a Cook v. Jobs rant?
I see more and more of these junk photo / file storage companies shutting down all the time. My wife paid a "lifetime" subscription to some baby photo album service. I warned her not to use them and just stick with Albums in Photos or use Google (or even my Adobe account), but she went ahead and paid. Just 6 months later, they're gone and so is her chunk of cash.
If you need long-term storage, stick with the big guns. Apple / Google / Microsoft / Adobe or buy your own space through AWS or through another hosting provider. Come to think of it, there's always risk, even with the above companies as they change their products and policies all the time.
If you want safe storage, get yourself a Synology RAID NAS, (which you will always own), and double back it up on a Cloud service. It's not cheap, but then ask yourself, how valuable are your family photos and your documents?
If you need long-term storage, stick with the big guns. Apple / Google / Microsoft / Adobe or buy your own space through AWS or through another hosting provider. Come to think of it, there's always risk, even with the above companies as they change their products and policies all the time.
If you want safe storage, get yourself a Synology RAID NAS, (which you will always own), and double back it up on a Cloud service. It's not cheap, but then ask yourself, how valuable are your family photos and your documents?
This!!!
I have the same router, 2TB AirPort Extreme and it's rock solid in terms of reliability. Never once dropped. Never needed a reboot. Absolutely solid. The same goes for the AirPort Express units around my home.
Unfortunately the Express units are too slow, so I'm slowly "upgrading" my WiFi around my home with Ubiquiti gear, and lets just say it's "patchy". Yes, it's fast, but I've had a number of moments where I've had to physically disconnect the power and reboot the WiFi unit to get it going again. (This is no easy feat as it's placed in a discreet ceiling location, as designed), so I bought a smart plug for it.....but guess what!? That needs WiFi to work! So a bluetooth smart plug later and I've got a reset mechanism in place if needed.
Rant over.
Anyway....I wish Apple would do WiFi gear again!
