Just a week ago, I was musing about the mysterious economics of Google Photos. How, I wondered, could Google afford to give away unlimited online photo and video storage for 1 billion users, especially without harvesting their personal data for targeted ads?

Turns out, it can't.

Starting in June of next year, Google Photos will begin counting new photo and video uploads toward your Google account's storage limit. Existing photos and videos won't use up any storage, nor will uploads from Google's current and previous Pixel phones. But otherwise, you'll have just 15 GB to use across Photos, Gmail, and Google Drive before hitting a paywall. (Google's storage plans cost $2 per month or $20 per year for 100 GB, $3 per month or $30 per year for 200 GB, and $10 per month or $100 per year for 2 TB.)

As someone who's become attached to Google Photos, the announcement brings up a lot of mixed emotions:

• Without question, this is bad news.
• Google deserves at least some credit for avoiding the easy way out, and not sullying Photos with ads or invasive data collection. And seven months is a decent amount of time to evaluate alternatives.
• Still, it's disappointing that Google couldn't find a better way to monetize Photos, one that involved incentives rather than restrictions. Last week's news of pro editing tools for Google One subscribers seemed like a sign that Google was going down that path.
• Instead, Google is pushing users toward subscriptions because it can, having used its free service to hook users while also thinning out the field of potential competitors.

But whether you think Google's being fair or not, the reality is that Google Photos will become a profoundly different service after June 2021. When it launched in 2015, the central idea was that you wouldn't have to worry about deleting or sorting through photos. Just upload everything, and Google's superior search and face recognition features would take care of the categorization. With or without paying for Google One storage, you'll always have to make a mental calculation that didn't exist before, and that effectively steals away some of Google Photos' magic.

So what can you do?

For now, the last refuge for unlimited online photo storage is Amazon Prime, but Amazon doesn't store unlimited videos—you've got just 5 GB for those—and I wouldn't bet on Amazon keeping that benefit around forever. Google's hardly the first company to break the promise of unlimited storage, and it probably won't be the last.

You can also just try to cope with Google's storage limits. This website will estimate when you'll run out of storage based on current usage patterns, and come June, Google will release a tool to manage photos in bulk, for instance by surfacing dark or blurry photos to delete. Even now, you can use Google's storage management website to delete large Gmail attachments or Drive files. As an extreme measure, you could also migrate old emails to a separate inbox or set up a secondary account just for Photos.

Otherwise, you might just take a more holistic look at which cloud storage service is worth paying for. Apple's iCloud service could be a better fit if you're bundling it with other Apple services. Prime Photos will make more sense if you've got any Echo Show smart displays or Fire TV devices around the house, since those devices can automatically pull in images from Amazon's service. Without the lure of free storage, Google Photos becomes harder to justify as the default option.

As for me, Google's already got its hooks in too deep. The Lenovo Smart Display in our kitchen has become too big of a fixture with its constantly-updated Google Photos wallpapers, and having to migrate years' worth of older photos to some other service would be a major hassle.

Besides, I still enjoy Google Photos more than other services like it. Its face recognition seems more accurate than Amazon Prime's—probably because it's been trained on a lot more data—and unlike iCloud, I can still use it to upload from Android phones. Meanwhile, Google Photos' ability to auto-share photos of specific faces with another person remains without peer. My wife and I use that to keep our kids' photos in sync, and it'd be hard to give that up.

All of which is a long way of saying that Google has built something worth paying for. Too bad it did so in a way that leaves a bitter taste.
 

In case you missed my email from last week, Advisorator now has a members-only website with a searchable archive of every past newsletter! You can also use the site to manage your subscription, sign up for Advisorator's Slack chat room, and subscribe to an (experimental for now) RSS feed.

If you haven't set up an account yet, just click this link, enter your email, and select "Send me reset instructions." You'll then get another email with a link to set your new password. After signing up, head to advisorator.com/members to access the archives and more.
 

The Mac's big leap forward: Five months after announcing plans to drop Intel processors from new MacBooks, Apple has released the first batch powered by its own silicon. The new 13-inch MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini desktop all feature Apple's new M1 chip, which the company says is both faster and more power-efficient than its old Intel processors. The new Air doesn't even have a fan inside. Perhaps just as notably, the new Macs will also run iOS apps, which should open up some interesting new possibilities.

So what's the catch? For now, large swaths of the Mac lineup haven't gotten the M1 treatment, including the 16-inch MacBook Pro, iMac desktops, and the powerful Mac Pro. It's also unclear how Apple silicon will compare to computers with dedicated graphics cards, and while Apple's Rosetta 2 translation software looks promising for running software that was designed for Intel chips, we'll have to see if any hiccups arise once the hardware is out in the real world.

Even so, Apple has made clear that M-series chips are the future. It hasn't committed to a specific timeframe for supporting Intel-based MacBooks, and it's not even selling Intel-powered MacBook Airs anymore. If you can avoid buying an Intel-based Mac, you should.

Big sur, big problems: Not all was well in the Mac world last week, though. With the launch of Apple's MacOS 11 Big Sur, users discovered that their apps wouldn't load, which in turn led to a more troubling discovery: Whenever a Mac is online, Apple collects data on the computer's location and the software it's running, running through a server that tries to detect security issues. Proclamations that you don't really own your computer soon abounded.

It's not quite as insidious as it sounds—Apple says it doesn't associate this data with individual devices—but the snafu was serious enough to prompt some policy changes. Apple has now committed to both deleting the location data it's collected and letting users opt out of these security checks in the future.

Also: Some owners of 13-inch MacBook Pros from late 2013 and early 2014 have reported that their laptops have stopped working, so don't update yet if you have one of those.

Gmail's data disclosure: Google says it will begin reminding Gmail users that it uses the content of their emails for "smart features" such as automatic sorting of promotional emails, suggested replies, restaurant reservations in Google Maps, and bill payment reminders in Google Assistant. (It does not, however, use email content for targeted ads.) You'll also have the option to turn those smart features off.

While some of those settings are already available in Gmail's settings menu, others are hidden inside different apps. For instance, turning off Gmail event reminders in Google Calendar requires a trip to Calendar settings. So it'll be nice to have them all in one place.
 

Big Sur tricks: I don't want to totally rain on Mac users' parade with the launch of Big Sur. Initial hiccups aside, it's a major upgrade for Apple's desktop operating system, with a visual overhaul and lots of new features to check out. (It's also the first whole number upgrade for MacOS since OS X 10.0 arrived in 2001.)

Tim Hardwick at MacRumors has an excellent guide to what's new, but I'll pick out a few features that seem especially noteworthy:

• The classic Mac startup chime is back. Turn it on or off by heading to System Preferences > Sound and looking for the "Play sound on startup" check box.
• Tweak the Safari home page by clicking the little slider icon in the bottom-right corner. You can change the wallpaper and toggle sections like your favorites and frequently-visited sites.
• Fully-charge your MacBook by clicking the battery icon and selecting "Charge to Full Now." This will override the setting that limits charging to preserve the battery's life span.
• As in iOS 14, you can pin conversations to the top in Apple's Messages app. Just drag any thread from the sidebar to the top of the window.
• Also like iOS, MacOS now include a Control Center for common settings. Click the toggle icon in your menu bar to view it, or head to System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar to rearrange the controls. You can also hold Command and drag any Control Center setting into the menu bar for faster access.
• You can now pick accent and highlight colors to that tweak the look of apps. You'll find these options under System Preferences > General.

An easier way to mail merge: Next time you need to send out some personalized emails in bulk. Instead, consider the mail merge, which uses an external file—usually a spreadsheet—with names and other personal info tailored to each recipient. While the concept is rather old, a new service called PostSheet makes the process easy.

Just create a speadsheet in Google Sheets with separate columns for names, email addresses, and other info, then paste it into PostSheet. You'll then be able to type out the email and mark it up with the headings of your personalized columns. (For instance, if you have a column called "name" in your spreadsheet, you might type "Hi {{name}}," to personally address your recipients.)

The service is free for up to 100 emails a month. That may not cut it for professional use, but it could be enough for a personal touch while spamming your friends and family members.

Another neat music option: If you've read this newsletter long enough, you know I'm a fan of music services that are off the beaten path, so I was delighted last week to hear of a new one called Supercreative Radio. It's nothing fancy, just a steady stream of low-key grooves, curated by a French designer. I like the vibes and the daily spinning album artwork that complements the live stream.
 

• Youtube-dl, the software for downloading YouTube videos, is safe for now.
• Facebook adds Snapchat-style disappearing messages in Messenger and Instagram.
• Instagram's redesign pushes TikTok-style "Reels" videos.
• Amazon's in-garage delivery expands to more places, adds grocery support.
• Spotify will get more data about your podcast habits, whether you use it or not.
• Sonos speakers get CD-quality radio stations for $8 per month.

It's not Black Friday yet, but the deals are already flowing freely. Here's a rundown:

• Lenovo Chromebook Duet has returned to $250 at Best Buy, or get an open box model in like-new condition for as little as $212. This is the fun little laptop-tablet hybrid I wrote about in August.
• Lenovo's Flex 5 Chromebook is also $50 off from Amazon, bringing the price to $350. I reviewed this one for PCWorld, and it's a solid value if you can look past some screen and speaker complaints.
• One more Lenovo laptop deal: The Yoga C740 with a 10th gen Core-i5 processor, 256 GB of storage, and 8 GB of RAM for $550, down from $800.
• The Wyze Cam Pan (pictured above) is a cheap-but-good rotating security camera that's on sale for $30.38. That's $7.60 off the list price. The non-rotating Wyze Cam V2 is also on sale for $20.78, for a discount of about $5.
• This 10,000 mAh portable battery charger costs just $8 when you use the coupon code 7LDJBNDA.
• If you have a free My Best Buy Rewards membership, the UE Megaboom 3 Bluetooth speaker is half-off at Best Buy, bringing the price to $100.
• Also for My Best Buy members: Skullcandy's Sesh Evo wireless earbuds for $25, down from $60.
• My Best Buy members can take $70 off Apple's latest iPad with 128 GB of storage.
• Get Sony's WH-1000XM4 wireless noise-cancelling headphones plus a Sony Bluetooth speaker for $278 when you apply the discount code SD2020 at checkout.
• Several Apple Watch models are $50 off, including the Apple Watch SE and Series 6 in various sizes and colors.
• For the gamers: Monoprice's 34-inch, 1440p, 144 Hz refresh rate, HDR curved display is on sale for $350, down from the usual $500.

With the holiday shopping season getting into full swing, I've been seeing a big uptick in notable deals, and I'm not always able to write them up in a deal alert email. In those cases, I've been posting quick links in Advisorator's chat room on Slack and opening up the floor to further questions or comments. If you want to stay abreast of even more deals than I've been sending out over email, consider joining the chat room yourself, and be sure to say hello when you do!

Until next week,
Jared