Did I ever mention that I fucking hate the fucking web

And he should be able to just plug his phone into his computer and pull the images right off with MTP. Don't know why that's so hard.

Phone -> USB Cable -> Computer. Transfer images via said cable. Select images, put in email and send to mum.

Having said that - all his points are valid, though I'm not sure I'd bother to get that angry at stuff that is out of my contorl.

10 years ago, which is still 2005, you had print kiosks in places like target where, you could plug in your digital camera or SD/Compact Flash cards and print them out, 10 years before that, you had a "guaranteed" flow of how to obtain your photos: take the snapshot, take in film to a photo lab for development, at which point you thought about how many copies you might want. you may have lost some in the lab, but the flow worked, and it was the same at every photo lab.

Regardless of the time period, he's annoyed how the "ease of use and simple flow" is not so easy, and doesn't seem to flow. Some of it may be not being familiar with the "way they want you to use their products" (poor UX in my opinion). But that's what kills me about today's app centered smartphone web, everything is a unique little microcosm that is slightly different than the others in a way that is obnoxious. Perhaps it is the difference between being a consumer of content and a producer. As a producer of content I would like to think I have control over how I can obtain and distribute it, but technically you end up acting as a consumer of the product that "allow you" to produce... end rant

10 years ago you could print the photos on an inkjet or color laser printer at home. But this was a costly proposition in both time and money. Ink and toner being more expensive by weight than...a whole bunch of luxury goods[1].

You would still have to visit the post office and she'd have to wait for delivery, so you're right about that.

Is the photo storage and sharing market ripe for a (re)disruption?

--- [1] http://www.npr.org/2012/05/24/153634897/why-printer-ink-is-t...

It's similar to the patience people have to put up with ads, or crapware, or most of the mobile apps being useless and ugly and broken. I think most of the people just don't expect anything better, blindly accepting whatever is there because they can't imagine that technology could actually be good.

I can, and I sometimes wish I couldn't - so that web and mobile experience wouldn't be so goddamn annoying.