Hacker News Reader

Comment by csmuk | Hacker News Reader

>The vast majority of photo management these days happens on the web and in HTTP-using client applications, where sharing, not editing, is the killer feature.

You'd be surprised. There are many of us who don't do social photography and use desktop photographic software and Windows' built in image management stuff.

And Microsoft make more money out of us with Windows licenses than Facebook do with social photography.

The right client bet was the choice of doing it where you please, which they offer(ed).

However, they're pushing everything onto SkyDrive now in an "everything everywhere" approach which is a bad move.

Surprisingly Apple and DIY (Linux or own software) are the only people offering choice still, or at least not nagging you about moving to the cloud.

View on HN

I know there are a lot of you, and there always will be. But how many more Windows Phone licenses would Microsoft be selling if they were the online photo sharing platform instead of a distant also-ran?

WinFS was the wrong strategic move because cross-device availability and network effects dwarf whatever value you can get out of a local store. It's exactly the reason web mail won for consumers.

Note: I own a windows phone. It syncs photos with SkyDrive, allows you to post to facebook etc.

It allows choice. Suprisingly, Windows has always allowed choice.

Web mail won for consumers for a bit. Now it's heading towards apps and sync which are omnipresent on all platforms now.

WinFS was replaced with metadata indexing which didn't incur the system-level performance hit. Metadata indexing is there on iOS, Windows at least.

Edit: I don't actually take photos with my phone unless it's a quick shot of my car parked to make sure I don't get a dodgy ticket.

    There are many of us who don't do social
    photography and use desktop photographic
    software and Windows' built in image
    management stuff.

I fall into a different category. I do some 'social photography' as a means of personal promotion, but almost never with my iPhone's camera. Virtually 100% of the photos I upload to, say, Facebook and Instagram came out of one of my dedicated cameras, like my DSLR or digital rangefinder.

All of my photos are shot in camera RAW, and I manage them in Lightroom. It wouldn't be possible for me to use built-in image management tools on OS X or Windows, or manage the photos through Finder or Explorer, respectively, since I need non-destructive photo editing.

Lightroom provides non-destructive photo editing, and basically everything else I need, and provides it through their .lrcat catalog files, which, interestingly, are actually just sqlite3 databases.

I use a DSLR, shoot raw and use Lightroom as well. In fact I just filled up 12Gb of Harry Potter studio tour today...

However we're a pretty niche "prosumer" market. The really big sector is "cheapy digital compact" and use windows' tools because it's what they have and it's the least effort. The tooling is shit but it's good enough for most things.

I mentioned the studio tour becuase there is a good distribution of "normal" camera owners there. The breakdown was pretty much 10% DSLR, 70% compact digital, 20% smartphone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com