66 ms·

Upthere raises $77M to put a new spin on personal cloud storage

61 points by doppp 10y ago

zellyn 10y ago
I read/skimmed the whole article, and still don't understand why this is better than Dropbox. Also, aside from mentioning Middle Out compression, this was indistinguishable from Pied Piper… :-p
- aaronpk 10y ago
  It seems they're pushing one of the differences which is that this doesn't sync to a folder on your computer. The files only live in the cloud. Why this is better than a syncing approach is not clear to me. I was hoping the "new spin" would be something a little more radical.
  - dannylandau 10y ago
    No syncing -- you get all the benefits of accessing from the cloud without overloading your local storage. Just a guess.
  - kornish 10y ago
    It's better than a syncing approach because most people can't utilize the full extent of their sync-based storage due to local hard drive limitations. An example: if I have a 320GB local drive and Dropbox keeps all its files on my local drive, I can't store the full 1TB of files in Dropbox that I'm paying for. However, I probably don't need all of those 1TB of files at the same instant, just various subsets which change over time, meaning that a cloud storage solution which doesn't require constant client-server sync lets me actually utilize the full volume of the service.
    - jpalomaki 10y ago
      Dropbox project Infinite should help with this. It should make it possible to replace some contents of the Dropbox folder with place holders that only get downloaded when they are accessed. Personally I'm very much waiting for this. The current selective sync is too cumbersome. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-project-infinite/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-projec...
  - bluecalm 10y ago
    Obligatory: https://youtu.be/Ml92QEqE-RQ?t=45 https://youtu.be/Ml92QEqE-RQ?t=45 On serious note it would be very nice to have a choice in dropbox about what stays locally and what is cloud only. I don't understand those things that well but I suspect it would be relatively easy for them to add that if it's becoming a selling point for the competition. They must think they have more potential selling points if they are getting 77M.
- ljoshua 10y ago
  Sounds similar to Bitcasa's original approach, or Dropbox Infinite, just without the option of what you manually sync. I wonder what it's like in practice.
- bobsil1 10y ago
  "Phone/tablet with infinite storage." Everything in cloud with transparent local cache, not a sync metaphor. File granularity, not folders. Next-gen compared to Dropbox, which replaced hard drives and then flash drives for syncing home and work. Competes more with iCloud than Dropbox. Will probably try and get acquired by Apple/Google.
- rogerbinns 10y ago
  Dropbox has two good things going for it. One is that its syncing is reliable (not perfect, but usually better than the rest). The other is Linux support, which competitors ignore. Linux may not affect you directly, but if anyone in the org or collaborators use it, then you really want to be able to work with them too. Those two things aside, Dropbox is very poor. They don't have multi-account support. (There is some abomination where you can combine exactly one personal account with one business account, in a frankenmonster hostile user experience.) Their activity logs don't tell you which machine made changes, only which user. The mobile app doesn't sync, but many users think it does. I don't know how competitors differ in these kind of things, but that is because I use Linux.
sp527 10y ago
That is a tremendous amount of money relative to the market opportunity. Displacing existing providers is necessarily going to be crazy difficult. I would love to hear the VC insight on this one: why do they think Upthere will actually manage to capture consumer mindshare? Advertising what distinguishes it from related services in a way that consumers will care about is a challenge.
- api 10y ago
  The pedigree of the founders probably factors into it. Many VCs take the "we invest in people first" idea very seriously. For them a super-impressive team sells itself, while a less impressive team could only get funded with a ton of traction and proof. It's just reality. That being said, it's not a terrible idea for a certain customer base. I am disappointed at the apparent lack of first class security features though. That would be a differentiator. But I haven't looked hard... maybe they are below the fold. They talk about securing their platform but not about how I might secure my data. Edit: why do none of the big cloud drive and sync providers offer basic symmetric local encryption of data? This is easier to implement by far than sync and I for one would pay for this.
  - roymurdock 10y ago
    Seems like they're taking Dropbox a step further and creating an OS-like application that will run across most types of machines, rather than just a web service/finder plugin. Which is an interesting idea given the advance of thin clients/chromebook-like devices, but will require cheaper and faster internet connectivity, and as you point out, security. I guess I can see this working in the corporate environment where the client machines will always be connected to the internet, and will really only be used for web browsing, word, excel, and ppt (a few 10s of gigs), but I'm very doubtful on its ability to penetrate the personal market. Personally I have absolutely no reason to spread my 100s of gigs of docs, music, and photos across yet another set of servers...and pay a yearly fee for the convenience of having a slightly thinner laptop and not having to plugin my time machine backup every week while opening myself up to trusting another third party service?
  - jasonsync 10y ago
nullcipher 10y ago
So this competes with Dropbox/ownCloud?
benologist 10y ago
My Synology NAS has a pretty good take on personal cloud storage, after I put a domain and SSL on it (which they make really easy with Lets Encrypt) it's pretty much interchangeable with a bunch of cloud services for music, files, tv/video etc. Primarily open source too, they've really done a slick web interface for linux. Given we're on the brink of putting an extra terabyte or two into your phone or tablet etc I think cloud storage is really going to boil down to allowing others' access.
- LongTermBond007 10y ago
  I've been looking into doing something similar for an offsite backup for my extensive photo collection- how much storage do you have and how much did it cost you?
  - benologist 10y ago
    I opted for a tiny little 2.5" drive version with 4 bays so currently it's limited to 8tb for now, they do 2 - 8 bay units for 3.5" drives which is probably more suitable for massive storage requirements, and with USB3 ports you can attach additional terabytes effortlessly. They also have additional devices to put even more drives in that extend your NAS storage. $280 with separate drives - https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS416slim-NAS-DiskStation/dp/B00LB0E9B4 https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS416slim-NAS-DiskStation/dp... One very cool part is it has sync software that can automatically sync all or some of your stuff - one way or bidirectional - to dropbox, google drive, backblaze, amazon glacier etc for backups and public access. There's a fork of their software here to install on other devices too - https://xpenology.me https://xpenology.me
    - ValentineC 10y ago
      > There's a fork of their software here to install on other devices too - https://xpenology.me https://xpenology.me It's not a fork so much as a custom bootloader for Synology's version of Linux. Here's the official forum: http://xpenology.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2 http://xpenology.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2
daxfohl 10y ago
Yay, finally blockchain storage! Oh, wait, just another "me too" advert.
Apocryphon 10y ago
Seen a joke somewhere else- isn't this product pretty much what Pied Piper (prior to the latest season finale) was trying to create? Except without compression.
- wehadfun 10y ago
  It sure sounds similar.
newman314 10y ago
Now if there was an Upthere overlay on my Synology, that could be a very interesting use case. Seamless HSM.
vegabook 10y ago
In my opinion it is a fundamental axiom of computer science that some local storage will always be necessary. We've just seen AMD put SSDs directly onto a video card [1] for precisely the reason that local bandwidth is supremely important, as use cases at the endpoint always swamp remote bandwidth. Just as we get to gigabit to the home, we are on the cusp of needing 100 gigabit to the display as things like VR and 360-degree video catch on (AMD's SSG will give us 50 of those gigabits). The history of computing has always seen this: remote bandwidth grows exponentially, but so does local bandwidth need, from an order of magnitude higher starting point, meaning the former never catches up with the latter. This is why I believe this business strategy to be doomed. [1] http://semiaccurate.com/2016/07/25/amd-puts-massive-ssds-gpus-calls-ssg/ http://semiaccurate.com/2016/07/25/amd-puts-massive-ssds-gpu...
- mrclubfoot 10y ago
  It's not so much that local storage will go away, but more that its role will change from a place where you "store" original content to a place where you "cache" content. As people move away from owning a single computer to owning multiple different devices that all produce content, it seems logical that you would move the "truth" of your data to the cloud.
  - vegabook 10y ago
    but that's Dropbox. So contrary to what the article asserts, this is just another dropbox.
    - dougperkins 10y ago
      Are they trying to claim that it's better than dropbox for viewing your content. Like just a better UI or what?
      - vegabook 10y ago
        well to raise 77 million something in their pitch is working. I'm guessing it's implicitness, ie, unlike actual local directories, as in dropbox et al, you'll just see the cloud, but there will still be a fat, local, cache. So really it's just a thin layer of abstraction on Dropbox and IMO that's very easily copyable by dropbox which is already moving in that direction. Basically, technically, nothing to see here folks. But someone in this shop must have good stage skills.
sinatra 10y ago
Local storage is extremely cheap. Except for mobile devices where it's kept artificially expensive as a way to price discriminate. However, I would not want to build a company around bypassing local storage because when (if?) local storage becomes cheaper on mobile devices, there will be absolutely no benefit of using their product. Then, as the photos and videos keep getting bigger and bigger due to higher resolution and quality, the bigger problem will be uploading those files to the "cloud" in the first place, not not having enough local storage. Because, compared to local storage, network connectivity for mobile devices will take longer to become mature.
- jpalomaki 10y ago
  Storage is still pretty limited on laptops. For example even on Macbook Pro you are still stuck with max 1TB. If you carry your computer around, external storage is pretty inconvenient. One issue with cheap local storage is the reliability. It is easy to get an external hard disk or NAS box, but quite difficult to setup appropriate backup procedures and maintain those. For example keeping data and backups in one physical location is not a very good idea.
  - sinatra 10y ago
    I'd argue that if you're running out of 1TB local storage for data you use frequently, then this completely cloud based service won't work for you anyway. Imagine how much data will go back and forth for that 1+TB. Something like Dropbox/Google Drive with selective sync will be a better option. And this cloud service doesn't solve the backup problem either. With Upthere, the copy in their cloud is your only copy. If their data gets corrupted, you lose everything. So, you want a proper remote backup solution anyway whether you use Upthere or Dropbox or Syncthing. And if you think Upthere must have good backup setup of their own, then I'd argue that so would Dropbox and Google Drive. So, I still am not sure if Upthere really provides that much value.
  - GrinningFool 10y ago
    > Storage is still pretty limited on laptops. For example even on Macbook Pro you are still stuck with max 1TB. If you carry your computer around, external storage is pretty inconvenient. Outside of Macbooks, though, there's a wide range of available storage options. Outside laptops, even wider. To OP's point, this seems like a limiting factor only until it isn't. If people are feeling the pain from Macbook storage limitations, it's a fair bet that the next iteration will let you go further. And the same applies across the board, including mobile.
farslan 10y ago
I've downloaded the app but the only way I can upload photos is to connect it to a Photos library. But my photos are not there. I wonder what's the appeal here is.
tlogan 10y ago
I installed Upthere to my mac. I have a question: for me, as a consumer, why would I use Upthere? What is added value? Both Dropbox and Google Drive work well (even OneDrive personal on mac is ok) - buy maybe I'm missing point here.
mynegation 10y ago
Time for another rant, sorry. So how is it different from Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive and countless other offerings? At this point I opted for a physical server at my home, with encrypted cloud backups of important stuff and periodic offsite backups of everything. I have a love-hate relationship with Synology. It is a closed system running some bizarre variant of Linux, but at least they are doing something with a nice interface and nicely pairs with their mobile apps. I wish there was some open-source effort for a home server like this that is equally well-designed, but so far I have not found any, so I am running with this. Hopefully Sandstorm or OwnCloud or someone else will get there at some point! It is very cheap storage, it is connected to the internet, it has some nice phone applications that I can use to access my content, I can run scripts on it to back up data from other services like Instagram, it is available on all of my computers. If I am ever to get sucked into another cloud storage, give me encryption, open source client, mobile apps, connection to other services to backup my content, API access to my data, openness to third parties building connections with your platform and I will chase you to give you my money.
- allworknoplay 10y ago
  > So how is it different from Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive and countless other offerings? It takes your files off of your computer except for an intelligent local cache. It doesn't integrate with your file system. The creators clearly think storing everything locally and syncing copies to the cloud is over. I think a lot of techy people fail to realize exactly how little most people rely on their computers for anything other than web services, and how extensively most people rely on their phones for basically everything. None of the offerings you mentioned are really that great with phones. Based on your use of your own local physical storage server, it's pretty clear that this isn't for you. It isn't for me either. But try putting yourself in someone else's shoes for a change.
  - tlogan 10y ago
    I'm actually that "someone else..." so here is my feed back on that. I do not care about "it takes your files off of your computer except for an intelligent local cache." What does it mean for me and my photos? Also, all my photos are uploaded into Dropbox via iPhone anyway...
tsurkoprt 10y ago
I'm surprised why would someone give so much money for something that exists and no additional value to it. Here is upcoming startup and I'm waiting to release its beta to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3aXb5RqS0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3aXb5RqS0s Private, Streams and Just works.
dmix 10y ago
There's about a hundred of these services but somehow none of them support linux. Even if they do it's with the most half-assed software. I hope these guys invest in it now that they have capital. They are missing out on some critical early adopters to promote their software.
andruby 10y ago
I fail to see how this differentiates from what I currently get with iCloud Photo + iTunes Match. iCloud Photo is cheaper ($2,99 vs $4,99) and is officially supported and integrated by Apple on iOS and macOS. What's the difference? Why would you choose a more expensive third-party solution?
- Wompy 10y ago
  If you aren't in the Apple ecosystem that might be one reason.
  - sanowski 10y ago
    Then you're in the android ecosystem which is heavy Google.
imbeau 10y ago
Seems interesting and reminds me a lot of the Nextbit Robin - a kickstarted android phone that can offload less-used data and apps to the cloud.
abalone 10y ago
Isn't iCloud Photo Library already better than this for media? It's also just an "intelligent local cache". It downloads device-optimized previews. It has a sharing system (photo streams). It has data centers that handle scale. Furthermore, it has native device OS integration. That means it can handle syncing that cache with the cloud better. It can do it while the device is otherwise alseep, i.e. overnight. Third party apps need a hack to keep the device awake. Notice Upthere has a setting for this called "prevent auto lock" which it recommends enabling for "large" uploads. That's really suboptimal. iCloud is also native to the Photos app. Upthere has to compete with all the library features in Photos too, like all the machine learning stuff that's coming in iOS 10. Maybe it's somehow better for other documents / as a straight Dropbox or iCloud Drive competitor. Maybe the core tech and team makes them a good acquisition target. But for the "rich media" that takes up the bulk of local storage, it's going to be hard to move the needle as third party app.
dougperkins 10y ago
Not sure how this has raised $77M considering it isn't anything really new. I'm also having a hard time understanding why it is better than using a personal cloud/media server app like Tonido (http://www.tonido.com/ http://www.tonido.com/), younity (https://getyounity.com/ https://getyounity.com/), or even Plex (plex.tv) that offer remote access of your locally stored files for free.

61 points by doppp 10y ago

I read/skimmed the whole article, and still don't understand why this is better than Dropbox. Also, aside from mentioning Middle Out compression, this was indistinguishable from Pied Piper… :-p

aaronpk 10y ago
It seems they're pushing one of the differences which is that this doesn't sync to a folder on your computer. The files only live in the cloud. Why this is better than a syncing approach is not clear to me. I was hoping the "new spin" would be something a little more radical.
- dannylandau 10y ago
  No syncing -- you get all the benefits of accessing from the cloud without overloading your local storage. Just a guess.
- kornish 10y ago
  It's better than a syncing approach because most people can't utilize the full extent of their sync-based storage due to local hard drive limitations. An example: if I have a 320GB local drive and Dropbox keeps all its files on my local drive, I can't store the full 1TB of files in Dropbox that I'm paying for. However, I probably don't need all of those 1TB of files at the same instant, just various subsets which change over time, meaning that a cloud storage solution which doesn't require constant client-server sync lets me actually utilize the full volume of the service.
  - jpalomaki 10y ago
    Dropbox project Infinite should help with this. It should make it possible to replace some contents of the Dropbox folder with place holders that only get downloaded when they are accessed. Personally I'm very much waiting for this. The current selective sync is too cumbersome. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-project-infinite/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-projec...
- bluecalm 10y ago
  Obligatory: https://youtu.be/Ml92QEqE-RQ?t=45 https://youtu.be/Ml92QEqE-RQ?t=45 On serious note it would be very nice to have a choice in dropbox about what stays locally and what is cloud only. I don't understand those things that well but I suspect it would be relatively easy for them to add that if it's becoming a selling point for the competition. They must think they have more potential selling points if they are getting 77M.
ljoshua 10y ago
Sounds similar to Bitcasa's original approach, or Dropbox Infinite, just without the option of what you manually sync. I wonder what it's like in practice.
bobsil1 10y ago
"Phone/tablet with infinite storage." Everything in cloud with transparent local cache, not a sync metaphor. File granularity, not folders. Next-gen compared to Dropbox, which replaced hard drives and then flash drives for syncing home and work. Competes more with iCloud than Dropbox. Will probably try and get acquired by Apple/Google.
rogerbinns 10y ago
Dropbox has two good things going for it. One is that its syncing is reliable (not perfect, but usually better than the rest). The other is Linux support, which competitors ignore. Linux may not affect you directly, but if anyone in the org or collaborators use it, then you really want to be able to work with them too. Those two things aside, Dropbox is very poor. They don't have multi-account support. (There is some abomination where you can combine exactly one personal account with one business account, in a frankenmonster hostile user experience.) Their activity logs don't tell you which machine made changes, only which user. The mobile app doesn't sync, but many users think it does. I don't know how competitors differ in these kind of things, but that is because I use Linux.

sp527 10y ago

That is a tremendous amount of money relative to the market opportunity. Displacing existing providers is necessarily going to be crazy difficult. I would love to hear the VC insight on this one: why do they think Upthere will actually manage to capture consumer mindshare? Advertising what distinguishes it from related services in a way that consumers will care about is a challenge.

api 10y ago
The pedigree of the founders probably factors into it. Many VCs take the "we invest in people first" idea very seriously. For them a super-impressive team sells itself, while a less impressive team could only get funded with a ton of traction and proof. It's just reality. That being said, it's not a terrible idea for a certain customer base. I am disappointed at the apparent lack of first class security features though. That would be a differentiator. But I haven't looked hard... maybe they are below the fold. They talk about securing their platform but not about how I might secure my data. Edit: why do none of the big cloud drive and sync providers offer basic symmetric local encryption of data? This is easier to implement by far than sync and I for one would pay for this.
- roymurdock 10y ago
  Seems like they're taking Dropbox a step further and creating an OS-like application that will run across most types of machines, rather than just a web service/finder plugin. Which is an interesting idea given the advance of thin clients/chromebook-like devices, but will require cheaper and faster internet connectivity, and as you point out, security. I guess I can see this working in the corporate environment where the client machines will always be connected to the internet, and will really only be used for web browsing, word, excel, and ppt (a few 10s of gigs), but I'm very doubtful on its ability to penetrate the personal market. Personally I have absolutely no reason to spread my 100s of gigs of docs, music, and photos across yet another set of servers...and pay a yearly fee for the convenience of having a slightly thinner laptop and not having to plugin my time machine backup every week while opening myself up to trusting another third party service?
- jasonsync 10y ago

nullcipher 10y ago

So this competes with Dropbox/ownCloud?

benologist 10y ago

My Synology NAS has a pretty good take on personal cloud storage, after I put a domain and SSL on it (which they make really easy with Lets Encrypt) it's pretty much interchangeable with a bunch of cloud services for music, files, tv/video etc. Primarily open source too, they've really done a slick web interface for linux. Given we're on the brink of putting an extra terabyte or two into your phone or tablet etc I think cloud storage is really going to boil down to allowing others' access.

LongTermBond007 10y ago
I've been looking into doing something similar for an offsite backup for my extensive photo collection- how much storage do you have and how much did it cost you?
- benologist 10y ago
  I opted for a tiny little 2.5" drive version with 4 bays so currently it's limited to 8tb for now, they do 2 - 8 bay units for 3.5" drives which is probably more suitable for massive storage requirements, and with USB3 ports you can attach additional terabytes effortlessly. They also have additional devices to put even more drives in that extend your NAS storage. $280 with separate drives - https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS416slim-NAS-DiskStation/dp/B00LB0E9B4 https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS416slim-NAS-DiskStation/dp... One very cool part is it has sync software that can automatically sync all or some of your stuff - one way or bidirectional - to dropbox, google drive, backblaze, amazon glacier etc for backups and public access. There's a fork of their software here to install on other devices too - https://xpenology.me https://xpenology.me
  - ValentineC 10y ago
    > There's a fork of their software here to install on other devices too - https://xpenology.me https://xpenology.me It's not a fork so much as a custom bootloader for Synology's version of Linux. Here's the official forum: http://xpenology.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2 http://xpenology.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2

daxfohl 10y ago

Yay, finally blockchain storage! Oh, wait, just another "me too" advert.

Apocryphon 10y ago

Seen a joke somewhere else- isn't this product pretty much what Pied Piper (prior to the latest season finale) was trying to create? Except without compression.

wehadfun 10y ago
It sure sounds similar.

newman314 10y ago

Now if there was an Upthere overlay on my Synology, that could be a very interesting use case. Seamless HSM.

vegabook 10y ago

In my opinion it is a fundamental axiom of computer science that some local storage will always be necessary. We've just seen AMD put SSDs directly onto a video card [1] for precisely the reason that local bandwidth is supremely important, as use cases at the endpoint always swamp remote bandwidth. Just as we get to gigabit to the home, we are on the cusp of needing 100 gigabit to the display as things like VR and 360-degree video catch on (AMD's SSG will give us 50 of those gigabits). The history of computing has always seen this: remote bandwidth grows exponentially, but so does local bandwidth need, from an order of magnitude higher starting point, meaning the former never catches up with the latter. This is why I believe this business strategy to be doomed. [1] http://semiaccurate.com/2016/07/25/amd-puts-massive-ssds-gpus-calls-ssg/ http://semiaccurate.com/2016/07/25/amd-puts-massive-ssds-gpu...

mrclubfoot 10y ago
It's not so much that local storage will go away, but more that its role will change from a place where you "store" original content to a place where you "cache" content. As people move away from owning a single computer to owning multiple different devices that all produce content, it seems logical that you would move the "truth" of your data to the cloud.
- vegabook 10y ago
  but that's Dropbox. So contrary to what the article asserts, this is just another dropbox.
  - dougperkins 10y ago
    Are they trying to claim that it's better than dropbox for viewing your content. Like just a better UI or what?
    - vegabook 10y ago
      well to raise 77 million something in their pitch is working. I'm guessing it's implicitness, ie, unlike actual local directories, as in dropbox et al, you'll just see the cloud, but there will still be a fat, local, cache. So really it's just a thin layer of abstraction on Dropbox and IMO that's very easily copyable by dropbox which is already moving in that direction. Basically, technically, nothing to see here folks. But someone in this shop must have good stage skills.

sinatra 10y ago

Local storage is extremely cheap. Except for mobile devices where it's kept artificially expensive as a way to price discriminate. However, I would not want to build a company around bypassing local storage because when (if?) local storage becomes cheaper on mobile devices, there will be absolutely no benefit of using their product. Then, as the photos and videos keep getting bigger and bigger due to higher resolution and quality, the bigger problem will be uploading those files to the "cloud" in the first place, not not having enough local storage. Because, compared to local storage, network connectivity for mobile devices will take longer to become mature.

jpalomaki 10y ago
Storage is still pretty limited on laptops. For example even on Macbook Pro you are still stuck with max 1TB. If you carry your computer around, external storage is pretty inconvenient. One issue with cheap local storage is the reliability. It is easy to get an external hard disk or NAS box, but quite difficult to setup appropriate backup procedures and maintain those. For example keeping data and backups in one physical location is not a very good idea.
- sinatra 10y ago
  I'd argue that if you're running out of 1TB local storage for data you use frequently, then this completely cloud based service won't work for you anyway. Imagine how much data will go back and forth for that 1+TB. Something like Dropbox/Google Drive with selective sync will be a better option. And this cloud service doesn't solve the backup problem either. With Upthere, the copy in their cloud is your only copy. If their data gets corrupted, you lose everything. So, you want a proper remote backup solution anyway whether you use Upthere or Dropbox or Syncthing. And if you think Upthere must have good backup setup of their own, then I'd argue that so would Dropbox and Google Drive. So, I still am not sure if Upthere really provides that much value.
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  > Storage is still pretty limited on laptops. For example even on Macbook Pro you are still stuck with max 1TB. If you carry your computer around, external storage is pretty inconvenient. Outside of Macbooks, though, there's a wide range of available storage options. Outside laptops, even wider. To OP's point, this seems like a limiting factor only until it isn't. If people are feeling the pain from Macbook storage limitations, it's a fair bet that the next iteration will let you go further. And the same applies across the board, including mobile.

farslan 10y ago

I've downloaded the app but the only way I can upload photos is to connect it to a Photos library. But my photos are not there. I wonder what's the appeal here is.

tlogan 10y ago

I installed Upthere to my mac. I have a question: for me, as a consumer, why would I use Upthere? What is added value? Both Dropbox and Google Drive work well (even OneDrive personal on mac is ok) - buy maybe I'm missing point here.

mynegation 10y ago

Time for another rant, sorry. So how is it different from Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive and countless other offerings? At this point I opted for a physical server at my home, with encrypted cloud backups of important stuff and periodic offsite backups of everything. I have a love-hate relationship with Synology. It is a closed system running some bizarre variant of Linux, but at least they are doing something with a nice interface and nicely pairs with their mobile apps. I wish there was some open-source effort for a home server like this that is equally well-designed, but so far I have not found any, so I am running with this. Hopefully Sandstorm or OwnCloud or someone else will get there at some point! It is very cheap storage, it is connected to the internet, it has some nice phone applications that I can use to access my content, I can run scripts on it to back up data from other services like Instagram, it is available on all of my computers. If I am ever to get sucked into another cloud storage, give me encryption, open source client, mobile apps, connection to other services to backup my content, API access to my data, openness to third parties building connections with your platform and I will chase you to give you my money.

allworknoplay 10y ago
> So how is it different from Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive and countless other offerings? It takes your files off of your computer except for an intelligent local cache. It doesn't integrate with your file system. The creators clearly think storing everything locally and syncing copies to the cloud is over. I think a lot of techy people fail to realize exactly how little most people rely on their computers for anything other than web services, and how extensively most people rely on their phones for basically everything. None of the offerings you mentioned are really that great with phones. Based on your use of your own local physical storage server, it's pretty clear that this isn't for you. It isn't for me either. But try putting yourself in someone else's shoes for a change.
- tlogan 10y ago
  I'm actually that "someone else..." so here is my feed back on that. I do not care about "it takes your files off of your computer except for an intelligent local cache." What does it mean for me and my photos? Also, all my photos are uploaded into Dropbox via iPhone anyway...

tsurkoprt 10y ago

I'm surprised why would someone give so much money for something that exists and no additional value to it. Here is upcoming startup and I'm waiting to release its beta to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3aXb5RqS0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3aXb5RqS0s Private, Streams and Just works.

dmix 10y ago

There's about a hundred of these services but somehow none of them support linux. Even if they do it's with the most half-assed software. I hope these guys invest in it now that they have capital. They are missing out on some critical early adopters to promote their software.

andruby 10y ago

I fail to see how this differentiates from what I currently get with iCloud Photo + iTunes Match. iCloud Photo is cheaper ($2,99 vs $4,99) and is officially supported and integrated by Apple on iOS and macOS. What's the difference? Why would you choose a more expensive third-party solution?

Wompy 10y ago
If you aren't in the Apple ecosystem that might be one reason.
- sanowski 10y ago
  Then you're in the android ecosystem which is heavy Google.

imbeau 10y ago

Seems interesting and reminds me a lot of the Nextbit Robin - a kickstarted android phone that can offload less-used data and apps to the cloud.

abalone 10y ago

Isn't iCloud Photo Library already better than this for media? It's also just an "intelligent local cache". It downloads device-optimized previews. It has a sharing system (photo streams). It has data centers that handle scale. Furthermore, it has native device OS integration. That means it can handle syncing that cache with the cloud better. It can do it while the device is otherwise alseep, i.e. overnight. Third party apps need a hack to keep the device awake. Notice Upthere has a setting for this called "prevent auto lock" which it recommends enabling for "large" uploads. That's really suboptimal. iCloud is also native to the Photos app. Upthere has to compete with all the library features in Photos too, like all the machine learning stuff that's coming in iOS 10. Maybe it's somehow better for other documents / as a straight Dropbox or iCloud Drive competitor. Maybe the core tech and team makes them a good acquisition target. But for the "rich media" that takes up the bulk of local storage, it's going to be hard to move the needle as third party app.

dougperkins 10y ago

Not sure how this has raised $77M considering it isn't anything really new. I'm also having a hard time understanding why it is better than using a personal cloud/media server app like Tonido (http://www.tonido.com/ http://www.tonido.com/), younity (https://getyounity.com/ https://getyounity.com/), or even Plex (plex.tv) that offer remote access of your locally stored files for free.