It would be great to build the backend and API that supports the ultimate long-term cold storage, and then use it to make the ultimate wedding photography business application.
They're not radically different—one just uses the other. You could easily do both and continue to expand the use of the backend to enable useful applications. It's ridiculous to shun this specific consumer model just because it happens to be only one way you might use the original idea.
Yes, this. Makes crazy amounts of sense. Can be two vendors, I don't care.. but whoever does cold-storage exposing an API and having a business model that supports enough margin for the other business is great, and seems totally feasible.
They're not radically different—one just uses the other. You could easily do both and continue to expand the use of the backend to enable useful applications. It's ridiculous to shun this specific consumer model just because it happens to be only one way you might use the original idea.