"I can't think of a single reason why Apple would want to delete the files from the user's computer..."
Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being helpful here.
But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong - "I know! Let's save the user some space by serving all their music from the cloud!" The moment that file deletion came up in the design, the option to opt-in should have been added. Unless someone at Apple did indeed intend lock-in ...
The funny thing is: Disk space is only worth more than bandwidth in a few select 1st-world countries. I've been traveling in rural areas of South America for about 18 months now and regularly I had to turn off my MacBook because its automatic update "features" were consuming all of the available bandwidth, making it impossible for anybody to actually work.
> I had to turn off my MacBook because its automatic update "features" were consuming all of the available bandwidth
Which automatic update features, by the way? While I definitely don't like or defend such features, all the ones that I know about can be turned off—which gives a more useable result than having to turn off the whole computer! Maybe my Mac is silently doing some behind-the-scenes updating that I haven't noticed hitting my data, though.
(Windows 10 is the real pig here, though. Bye-bye, option to download only on request! Bye-bye, this month's data allowance before I realised that it was downloading what turned out to be a huge update! I did eventually discover how to designate a connection as 'metred', a nice feature that I wish Mac OS had.)
This isn't about a lack of expandable storage (all Macs have at least one USB port, some come with SD card slots), but rather that a lot of Macs come with very small SSDs.
I can totally see how this might have seemed like a good idea. Shame it's just... not.
I was kinda assuming the iphone here. Didn't think the app on a desktop OS would show that behavior. Is this true? Do people really run out of space on laptops and desktops due to photos?
I just checked the apple website and it seems you're right. 3 out of the 5 available Macbook pro variants have <= 256GB storage.
> I had just explained to Amber that 122 GB of music files were missing from my laptop
This is very much about a laptop rather than a phone. And yep, I'm also suffering from this. I've got a 2010 MacBook Air with 256GB storage. I'm down to 10GB free space and struggling to decide how to cope with the now 160GB Photos library.
On what devices is that really a good tradeoff? On mobile, sure (at least, on mobile devices like Apple's that don't have SD cards), but on a regular computer? I find it very hard to imagine that most people are more constrained by storage than bandwidth. Internet access just isn't that good. I can barely stream music over WiFi in many public places (coffee shops, airports, etc.).
If that's really the rationale, I think they're either optimizing for a use case that I find personally very atypical, or they didn't do their research.
>But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong
Don't contribute to stupidity what can adequately be explained by malice, especially when dealing with a massive company who hires quite intelligent individuals.
Lock-in was intended, and then some smart people found not just a way to sell it, but make it look more acceptable even if they were called out on it.
My phone has very limited local storage, so I can't keep photos on it. Fortunately, ownCloud implements this "good idea" basically right. I have "instant upload on WiFi" turned on for photos and videos. It uploads them to my ownCloud server, and then moves them from the system photos directory to its own directory if successful. It doesn't delete them from there, but I know that if something's in the ownCloud directory on my phone, it's backed up and available online, so I can clear it out periodically.
Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being helpful here.
But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong - "I know! Let's save the user some space by serving all their music from the cloud!" The moment that file deletion came up in the design, the option to opt-in should have been added. Unless someone at Apple did indeed intend lock-in ...