Comment by stephenhuey
14 hours ago
I hear ya. I'm not in the target market. Surprising, I know, considering how many SaaS platforms I've launched which maintain photos and videos in the cloud!
Many other iPhone/Macbook users have been shocked I don't turn on Messages on my Mac due to a bad experience with sync in the first year that was possible, and I had a similar bad experience with photos in iCloud early on. Maybe the sync is fast now, but my usage would put my in a higher iCloud tier than I'd like, and I still feel more at ease juggling many Photos libraries on external hard drives. I avoid Google Photos like the plague, and even though I trust Apple more (for now), I'd still rather not entrust to them my family's personal photos and videos.
As someone who has had the pain, if you're open to some prodding - one of your external hard drives might be broken right now. Don't risk it. Just pay a few bucks a month to avoid missing your memories. :) I don't think they've ever had a data loss.
It doesn't even have to be Apple. There's Backblaze and Arq and Tarsnap, amongst others. Encrypt the hell out of it and make sure there's a globally redundant copy of your files. If a thief or fire/tornado/earthquake/tsunami takes out your physical drives, where are you?
> fire/tornado/earthquake/tsunami takes out your physical drives, where are you?
Hopefully in a place where I can solve the bigger problems I have then!
Always good advice! I did start backing up at a location other than my home many years ago, but it’s not in a cloud. The one time I tried Backblaze I wasn’t impressed but I recognize there are other good alternatives and certainly agree with your strong convictions!
> Maybe the sync is fast now, but my usage would put my in a higher iCloud tier than I'd like
You can use Messages on the Mac without storing messages in iCloud. iPhone, iPad and Mac can all send and receive the same account’s messages, effectively staying in sync without actually syncing them to iCloud’s servers.