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Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

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Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#41

Post by elzbardico »

lordnacho wrote: post #12

Local-first was the first kind of app. Way up into the 2000s, you'd use your local excel/word/etc, and the sync mechanism was calling your file annual_accounts_final_v3_amend_v5_final(3).xls But also nowadays you want to have information from other computers. Everything from shared calendars to the weather, or a social media entry. There's so much more you can do with internet access, you need to be able to access re…

I remember the concept of departmental server/database/apps from that age. Lots of big companies still had mainframe applications running on their HQ, that had a consolidated view of their enterprise, and a lot of data transfers and batch jobs running off hours to synchronize everything.

It was the first practical manner to downsize mainframe applications.

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#43

Post by [deleted] »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #25
api wrote: post #8

I feel like a broken record here: it is not an engineering problem. Local-first and decentralized apps haven't become popular because SaaS has a vastly superior economic model, and more money means more to be invested in both polish (UI/UX) and marketing. All the technical challenges of decentralized or local-first apps are solvable. They are no harder than the technical challenges of doing cloud at scale. If there w…

Cloud SaaS services are often extremely heavily marketed, too, often with a VC-backed ad spend pool. That’s difficult if impossible to compete with. There’s also an upcoming generation that doesn’t know what a filesystem is which also doesn’t help matters.

[deleted]

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#44

Post by blacklion »

robmccoll wrote: post #34

I wonder about the categories of apps for which offline first with potentially infinitely delayed sync provides a better experience and how large those really are. It seems like most of those are apps where I'm creating or working on something by myself and then sharing it later. The online part is almost the nice-to-have. A lot of other apps are either near-real-time-to-real-time communication where I want sending t…

> It seems like most of those are apps where I'm creating or working on something by myself and then sharing it later.

It is interesting. I've thought about things I don in non-messaging apps (which are online0first for obvious reasons), and all of them create something, which can be EXPORTED to on-line presence, but doesn't require connected app.

Code? I write it locally and use separate app to share it: git. Yes, code is collaborative creation (I'm working in the team), but it is still separate tool and I like it, as I control what I'll publish for my colleagues.

Photos? Of course I want to share result, but I'm working on RAW files with non-destructive editing and I want to share final bitmap (as JPEG) and not RAW data and editing steps.

Same with music, if I create one (I doesn't).

Texts must be polished in solitude and presented as final result (maybe, as typographically set one, as PDF).

All my "heavy" applications are and should be offline-first!

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#45

Post by gejose »

Shameless self plug, but my workout tracking app[1] uses a sync engine and it has drastically simplified the complexities of things like retry logic, intermittent connectivity loss, ability to work offline etc.

Luckily this is a use case where conflict resolution is pretty straightforward (only you can update your workout data, and Last Write Wins)

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/titan-workout-tracker/id644949...

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#46

Post by jjcob »

api wrote: post #8

I feel like a broken record here: it is not an engineering problem. Local-first and decentralized apps haven't become popular because SaaS has a vastly superior economic model, and more money means more to be invested in both polish (UI/UX) and marketing. All the technical challenges of decentralized or local-first apps are solvable. They are no harder than the technical challenges of doing cloud at scale. If there w…

I don't know. I think it's a lucky coincidence, but I genuinely think that cloud based solutions are better.

Local first tends to suck in practice. For example, Office 365 with documents in the cloud is so much better for collaborating than dealing with "conflicted copy" in Dropbox.

It sucks that you need an internet connection, but I think that drawback is worth it for never having to manually merge a sync conflict.

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#49

Post by VikingCoder »

I want many more Local-Only apps, thanks. Self-Hosted.

Or Federated apps, again Self-Hosted.

And I think network infrastructure has been holding us back horribly. I think with something like Tailscale, we can make local-only apps or federated apps way, way easier to write.

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#50

Post by tcoff91 »

lordnacho wrote: post #12

Local-first was the first kind of app. Way up into the 2000s, you'd use your local excel/word/etc, and the sync mechanism was calling your file annual_accounts_final_v3_amend_v5_final(3).xls But also nowadays you want to have information from other computers. Everything from shared calendars to the weather, or a social media entry. There's so much more you can do with internet access, you need to be able to access re…

CRDTs are a pretty good experience for many data types when it comes to collaborative editing.
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