“Apple is putting an end to orders through its Photo Print Products service after Sept. 30,” Roger Fingas writes for AppleInsider. “If you’ve been a regular user, here are some alternative digital services for making calendars and photo books.”
“We’ve used all of these, so we’re going to say right now that for Apple users, the exiting Photo Print service is superior to all of these from an integration, variety, and overall quality standpoint hands down,” Fingas writes. “All of these services have their strong points, and weak spots.”
“Unfortunately, there’s no real way to pick a best offering overall — because there isn’t one,” Fingas writes. “However, if you shop smart, and order a product based on the strengths of the company, you can get the same quality product that you’d get from Photo Print.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Shutterfly looks to be the most comprehensive replacement, but it’s not the least expensive.
SEE ALSO:
Apple is finally getting out of the printing business – July 12, 2018
I loved Apple’s high-quality templates and ease of use. One thing I didn’t like is not being able to direct ship to someone across the border, so I would have to pay for shipping to me, then re-ship to the person on the other side of the border.
Shutterfly allows cross-border shipments (good), but I don’t like their templates as much (for photo books), and the online interface is less friendly to work with, especially if you have to upload and work with a large number of photos for the project at hand. It would be nice if Apple could work something out with some kind of APIs / extensions / add-ons for Photos, so you could create the book on you local Mac, then upload it all at once. (Or, has this already been done?)
Apple soon to be iPhone only company. That’s all folks!
thanks!
you know what we really need, though…
best computers to use now that Apple is getting out of the computer business!
Tim Cooks new Apple Ecosystem. iPhone + Apple Music with horrible music documentaries and Planet of the Apps. Nothing else. I am out.
It’s a loss. Photos, along with music, is one of the most important personal points of connectivity for your customer base. Steve knew this. Why dismantle the service? Is the next step the “Photos” app itself? Why put cameras in the iPhone and tout its amazing photo graphic technology when your customers will no longer be able to print and share those amazing photos using Apple’s super cool templates to create amazing books, cards, calendars etc. It all worked, amazingly well. It was just Cool. We need more of that not less. The decision is counter productive. Not everything is digital. With $267+ billion Cash on hand, it’s very disappointing to see this get slashed. The question is What’s next?
This is why I hesitate to buy anything apple anymore. I don’t trust apple to support their apps. They come out with the next greatest thing and BAM! Gone! Too many times I’ve been bitten. Remember IWeb? Aperture? I used both those apps a lot.
I’ve made a calendar for my mother every year, using iPhoto at first then Photos. It contained pictures of her granddaughter. She died this year, and now Cook kills off yet another thing that makes Apple unique.
Cooks kill list: Monitors, routers/backup storage, Aperture, print projects, and the Mac mini and Mac Pro (by neglect).
For photos I use http://www.mpix.com. To make books I use http://www.blurb.com. I started using Shutterfly a while back, but wasn’t happy with the skintones they produced, so I went to mpix, which I found to be more true to life. Perhaps Shutterly has fixed their problem, but I’ve been happy with mpix, and never gone back.
The only problem with mpix is that your photos do not remain in their database forever as they do with Shutterfly.