Nope. you're wrong. 10 years ago you could do all of this from your fucking home, just like you can do it now. The only difference is - you did not have to deal with all that Javascript bs.
FYI: ten years ago, we had e-mail, Flickr, Smugmug, web galleries, halfway decent digital cameras.
Also, the thread starter was setting up a straw man, no one said that developing photos yourself was better. Just that the experience of many web applications is not so good.
(Personally, I use BTSync's and/or Dropbox's photo sync, so that it shows up as a file on my machines. Sharing works fine as well, especially since Dropbox has the family-friendly Carousel that pulls photos of regular Dropbox.)