Apple needs to announce iCloud galleries; or lose them to Flickr and Picasa

By Jason D. O'Grady | September 13, 2011, 12:01am PDT

Summary: The water’s rising on MobileMe island and me (and my photos) are headed to higher ground.

I recently purchased a Lumix GF3 (more on it later) and I’ve been taking more pictures than normal the last couple of days. While importing my photos into Aperture 3 I glanced across its top bar (above) and got to thinking about my options for sharing my photos on the Web.

My photo workflow is pretty typical:

1. shoot photos
2. download photos to Aperture 3
3. upload photos to MobileMe Gallery
4. share a link with friends

The problem is that Apple is dropping its MobileMe Gallery feature on June 30, 2012 and it isn’t offering an alternative service. This leaves users like me in a bind. I’m certainly not going to continue creating galleries on the defunct service that I’ll have to potentially download and move later. What’s the point? The water’s rising on MobileMe island and me and my photos are heading to higher ground.

Users are posting their thoughts on Apple’s abandoning MobileMe Galleries in this Apple Discussion forum thread. One commenter says that he feels “utterly betrayed” while another feels that Apple succumbed to greed.

Disappointed users are saying that Apple’s new Photo Stream doesn’t cut it either. Photo Stream is a syncing service, with photos only being stored in the cloud for 30 days. You need to sync all photos back down to a PC or a Mac before they get deleted on the 30th day.

The worst part is that Apple isn’t offering a new photo hosting service that users can easily transition to. So you’ve got to download all your photos and video from MobileMe before next June or they’ll be deleted. This leaves loyal customers that bought into Apple’s one-click photo galleries high and dry.

Sure Facebook is one option, but it brings up privacy concerns. What happens to your private photos when Facebook decides to change its privacy settings overnight? Flickr Pro is a contender but it’ll set you back $25 per year. Picasa Web is looking like one of the the best options right now with beautiful announcement emails and galleries, but the Aperture > Picasa plug-in costs $25, and for some bizarre reason published Picasa galleries have no discernible slideshow option, a critical failure.

Apple needs to announce its plans for a Gallery-like photo hosting service for iCloud (even if it costs more) — either yes or no — before its loyal customers who poured their blood, sweat and tears into creating beautiful galleries schlep their photos and videos (and wheelbarrows of good will with it) to competing services.

Where are you going to park your digital photos in 2012?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-needs-to-announce-icloud-galleries-or-lose-them-to-flickr-and-picasa/11090?alertspromo=&tag=nl.rSINGLE