Yeah I think generally it would make more sense for individual instances to focus on specific topics, like programming.dev on programming or feddit.org for Europe.

It still makes sense to have the same communities in different languages if you ask me. There may also be other instances where this might actually be good.

But yeah, I don’t need ten different tech communities all serving the same purpose.

I initially thought the same. I finally upgraded my phone this year and since the new phones have the button I just tried it out and ended up really liking it. I would consider myself a photography enthusiast though, so I can see this is not for everyone. It just feels more like an actual camera. The position is still awkward, though

Sure! There’re actually a couple of things I like:

• It’s actually one of the few apps that still work like a traditional photo management app: It works on the base of a file-based library that has synchronization added on top. This enables me to freely move my library around, easily create backups of it or even reverse-engineer it. I’m aware there are brilliant foss apps like DigiKam (KDE/Linux) but they lack other aspects like synchronization and are not as tightly integrated.
• I’m still able to be somewhat independent on Apple: Since the library is file-based and I can extract my images using either my own tool or one of the tools available on GitHub, I can easily migrate away from apple should they start doing fishy things.
• Privacy-wise Apple seems to be one of the better options: Metadata like face recognition are computed locally on-device. I know there are more privacy oriented options like Ente, but their feature-set is not quite as mature as I need it.
• I just really like the apps: They’re well-integrated, easy to use and I like the editing capabilities. I also like the way they handle edited photos etc.

Organization-wise there’s nothing special. The only thing I do is to organize my images into albums.

To sum it up: It’s highly subjective but for my workflow it’s a good mix of autonomy and still good user experience.

I use a self-written tool to extract my images and videos from Apple Photos and back them up incrementally as files and directories using Borg Backup.

Using this approach I retain full ownership over my data without having to look for alternatives to Apple Photos, which I really enjoy using.

As a result, I have a “live” copy on my iPhone/Mac/iCloud, a backup on my NAS and a remote Borg Backup repository in a data center.