Jake Underwood, MacStories, reviewing Moment, an iOS app that takes video, but only keeps either the last 5 or 10 seconds and never runs out of space:
I set my phone up, pressed record, and after a couple of minutes ended the recording. When I opened Photos, the video was there immediately as a clip of the last 5 seconds I recorded.
First, this is a clever idea. It solves a real problem, that of capturing 5 to 10 seconds of video when space on your iPhone is low.
But to me, this raises another issue. Why is this app necessary? Surely Apple understands how frustrating this is. After all, Google built an entire ad campaign around never running out of space when that critical moment comes.
At the very least, why doesn’t the camera app warn you that space is low when it launches? Even better, why not reserve some emergency space and warn the user when they first dip into that reserve. They can still take that critical picture or video, but then they’ll know enough to delete or offload pictures or videos to make more space.
In the short term, we have solutions like Moment.
Here’s a link to Moment in the App Store.
it’s necessary because we don’t live in a fantasy world with limitless storage. has anyone ever complained about this with digital cameras? computer hard drives?
Why is it necessary? Eventually, you run out of RAM and have to write to local storage. Eventually, you run out of local storage and have to upload to cloud. Each of those is an order of magnitude slower (or more) than the previous.
Even if you had infinite storage, something like Moment is an ideal solution for certain problems. Who would want to keep two hours of video around for the last five seconds?
C’mon, man.
Aside from the points already made… it’s a bit tiresome for people to continually abdicate any responsibility for knowing how their tech works and doing some basic management of it. When you buy a car you don’t have to know how it all works, but you’re not getting a lot of sympathy if you don’t change the oil, replace the filters, etc and then it dies on you on a long trip.
Similarly, if you can’t be bothered to move old video etc off your phone and do at least a bit of cleanup my sympathy for you when you run out of storage is limited.
This is exactly how most high-speed video cameras work. They run and when you press the trigger they store off a pre-determined interval either before, around or after the trigger pull. It’s a classic solution to the issue of trying to capture an instant but not knowing exactly when it might occur. Even if you had the memory I’m not sure why you’d want to keep long videos when you only care about a few seconds.
Moment is a great idea. I’ve got fifty bucks that says there are already a dozen free copycats in App Review as I write this.