Polaroid went away, we dealt with it, riders moved (kicking and screaming) to digital. Someday that will go away and we'll deal with it.
In my opinion, it's not that rallymasters haven't caught up with technology - it's that the technology available doesn't meet our standards for reliability. We don't require photos just because we like looking at 50 identical photos of a statue of a half-naked fireman. The purpose of the photo (or receipt, or purchase, or phone call) is to prove that the rider actually went to the bonus. (Believe it or not, there have been riders who didn't go to the bonuses they claimed they did). We want riders to be able to leave the bonus location knowing that they successfully got whatever proof was required to prove they were there. If it's a photo, the rider can look at the photo (Polaroid or digital) and see that the bonus is in the photo and the rally flag is visible. If it's a receipt, the rider can look at the receipt and make sure all the required information is printed on it. Done, bagged. After that, if the rider loses the photo or the receipt or the camera, that's on the rider.
We often send riders to places without cell phone coverage or with marginal coverage or where there might be coverage from one carrier but not all four. So cell phones can't be guaranteed to provide real-time upload of whatever the bonus verification might be (photo or GPS ping). With a SPOT, you can push a button and send a message, but SPOT doesn't give direct feedback that the message got through.
Yes, you can queue an email so it gets sent when you get into cell phone coverage, or you can upload your cell phone photos to the cloud or to a server when you get to the wifi at the checkpoint, or you can set up your SPOT to send a text to your phone when a message is received to provide some feedback. And there is a risk that it won't work. If it doesn't work, the failure is on the rallymasters because that's the system we told the riders to use. So until that high-tech method is as reliable as having a photo in your hand or on an SD card, we won't require riders to depend on it.
The debate over memory card formats is bad enough, do we want to get into Verizon vs. AT&T vs. T-Mo vs. Sprint vs. Ting vs. Tracfone vs. postpaid vs. prepaid and what carrier roams on what other carriers and whether riders need to have data roaming or Canada roaming or even international service on their plans?