I understand it's a crushing time for the founders, but one of the things I seem to see on HN is the more respectably you wind down your startup, the more respect (and future deal flow) you seem to get.
Just 2c
This is sadly one of the more high profile moments a start up has - Handle it well, the founders will be seen as a safe pair of hands, do the equivalent of dropping the casket into the ground and walking off, maybe not so much.
It's not great that this is a metric, it's not great that more VCs will see how they shutdown than saw how they started up - but this is just another startup. The founders have 30+ year careers ahead. Good for them for making something, good for them for trying, and good for trying to land it at all. Many just told up tents and steal away.
We as a community are trying to learn the dos and donts of startup life cycles - seems to me this is one of the more high profile and often ignored donts.
otoh it's hard to justify this kind of investment in a folding company, also I don't think people who can't download photo in a month magically can given three months.
anyway if those photo were important to the owner and him used an internet startup as his sole backup well, shame on him :D
I haven't used the app, but it's likely that they're stored to your Camera Roll anyways, as Instagram does? In that case, they'd be backed up with the rest of your iPhone.