App Stores serve a lot of the same functionality as package managers, basically
May you live in interesting times.
If you use and like iCloud for photo management between multiple people, how is it?
PhotoStructure is designed exactly with this sort of heterogenous family setup in mind.
My wife uses a Chromebook and MBP, I'm on Ubuntu, Windows and macOS, we have a NAS, and we can mount the library directly with CIFS/samba/AFS/NFS, or use the PhotoStructure web interface that's hosted by any of the computers that are running.
Photos and videos get to the NAS via SyncThing or Resilio Sync. Duplicate and downsampled files (like via Google photos) are handled gracefully by PhotoStructure's sync process.
Most importantly, I retain control of my own files.
Disclaimer: I'm the author of PhotoStructure, and I'm eager to get user feedback during the closed beta. More info on my HN profile.
Still not a perfect solution, but AFAIK, it's also possible to pass iMessage authentication with a hackintosh. So the same spam vector is technically still open, albeit with a bit more work.
iCloud was accessible through the web browser before this app was available.
This just lets you access your files. As others have said you could already do it via the web.
1- Install SyncThing on both your Mac and Linux box.
2- Point Mac client to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs
3- Optional, for extra privacy run your own discovery/relay server.
4- Enjoy iCloud Drive on Linux.
You could push it much further by running the native app in a Windows VM and sync more than just your files.
I forgot where I saw this (a tweet?) but iCloud Drive may have moved in Catalina. It should only be a matter of pointing SyncThing to the new location, but it’s something to be aware of to keep your solution working.
This is likely an update for deeper compatibility.
It must be using a brand-new API, because I just installed v1903 and I still had to install an update to be able to install it.
From the write up this actually looks good and like it ties in more tightly with Windows. I’m thinking about downloading it just so it will sync my pictures to my Windows PC. I can then back them up with Backblaze.
https://www.cultofmac.com/124556/dropbox-refused-nine-digit-...
I can pay $100 a year for Office 365 which includes all of the Office apps and 6TB of storage or pay the same price for just Dropbox.
And like you said, I’m fine with 50GB of storage.
Is this part of a bigger strategy? Will there also be an Andriod version of Photos?
I can't find anything and am not holding my breath, but it would be so compelling for many scenarios. As an apple fanboy I frequently am using third-party apps to share photos with relatives and colleagues who aren't on the platform.
I don't doubt for a second that they will make the services behave in a way to drive users towards adopting their hardware too - such as gating certain functionalities.
A little off topic, but I also wish that GCP, Azure, and AWS would cooperate by having a few data centers collocated with very low bandwidth costs to make multi-cloud easier and cheaper. That would really put the consumer first.
And as long as I am wishing for things that probably won’t happen: I wish Apple would support custom email domains for a low cost (perhaps a few dollars a month).
I really wish iCloud would support macOS (Time Machine) too.
