Eye-Fi is a brand characterized by its SD cards with WiFi, perfect to provide wireless connectivity to a camera that does not have integrated WiFi, but have decided to put them aside by abandoning their users.
The company, recently bought by Ricoh, has been in the market for some time selling those cards with WiFi that upload our photos to the cloud, they are not unknown in the market and they have quite a few buyers. The big problem is thatthese WiFi cards are so attached to the cloud that when Eye-Fi has decided to close it, a lot of users have been taken aheadand has caused a monumental anger.
Why will the Eye-Fi Pro X2 stop working?
Eye-Fi Pro X2 cards work through a program called Eyefi Center, which is available for Windows and Mac. This program configures the card in such a way that Eye-Fi cloud acts as an intermediary between the card and our computer or mobile device, serving as a cloud for our photographs. This also makes the use of an Eye-Fi account mandatory to transfer the photos to the cloud, to later obtain them on our devices.
The big problem comes when we learn that Eye-Fi plans are to stop providing technical support for X2 cards from June 30, 2016. This would not be such a big drama if it did not mean that they are also going to shut down the servers that run the cards, making its WiFi functionality useless. From September 16 Eye-Fi accounts will stop working for everything, and there is only the option to configure the download before this occurs.
Every time the hardware is more attached to the cloud?
This case is blatant because these X2 cards have been officially sold until early 2015, and because Eye-Fi doesn’t bother to hide the fact that they want users to upload to a newer range of company cards, but also reopens the never-ending cloud debate.
Many devices are able to take advantage of the cloud and offer added value, but all that cloud is out of our reach, is under the complete control of a company and has its free will and its intentions. And if the company wants to close the service as users, we can do no more than stop trusting it and run out of the service. In this case, they are cards with WiFi, but what if it is with our thermostat or our lights, elements that last many years without being replaced?
Manufacturers should commit to avoiding these situations or offer alternative means such as the project becoming the community, but the mere presence of the cloud is creating these new problems that had not been raised until now. Has it ever happened to you? What solutions can you think of?
