Josh Withers · After The Wedding · 3 min read
Even the World's Richest and Biggest Computer Company Prints Its Photos
Despite having the world's best cloud storage and digital technology, Apple still prints its most precious photos. Here's why that matters for all of us.
I’m a massive Apple fanboy. It’s worth sharing this at the start of this blog post. I’m writing this on an iPad Pro, and my phone is an iPhone. I’ve read all the Steve Jobs books and seen all the movies. Confession complete!
I’m deeply invested in the spotlight we shine on life’s more precious moments—like getting married—and the atmosphere, feeling, and awesomeness of those occasions. I’m equally passionate about capturing and sharing these moments. I love a beautiful photo, I love what it can do to me and to you, and the journey great photos take us on.
Following this line of thought, I’ve contemplated what to do with my photos. Where do I store them? Where should I look at them? What’s the best practice for sharing, saving, and enjoying our photos not only today but tomorrow, next year, next decade, and when we’re in a retirement home?
I look at all the different services—like Google Photos, iCloud Photo Library, Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram—and wonder about their value today and in the future.
For the record, I’ve gone all in on a complicated strategy that involves iCloud Photo Library as my main repository, Google Photos as an automatic backup, and Dropbox for a third backup of all our professional photo shoots. Complicated and confusing, isn’t it?
The thing with digital photos is that they are complicated and confusing. The file formats are forever changing, and the services where you store them might close down or go broke. The whole system is complicated, confusing and, essentially, broken.
With all of that in mind, something clicked in my brain when I realised what Apple does with its photos. They have 30-odd years of products, history, stories, and photos they want to share. Where do they go?
Apple released a book of photos full of its products it’s proud of, called “Designed in California” (Also a great Christmas present for me!)
Each year, they also gather the world’s best iPhone photos and share them in a campaign called “Shot on iPhone”, and at the end of the campaign, they share the photos back with the community that took them.
And what does Apple do with its photos?
It prints them.
Apple loves photos, and despite having the world’s best engineers and most intelligent technical minds, iCloud Photo Library, your phone’s camera roll, or Dropbox aren’t the final destination for the photos. They get printed—in books, as prints, on billboards, on shop walls.
They print their photos, and that’s how they will be preserved and shared for generations.
I wonder if we should do the same with our photos?
