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Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

marcobambini.substack.com

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

#121

Post by Reubachi »

SilverbeardUnix wrote: post #60
canpan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I don't think replicated data structures are the problem. Look at single player video games, cannot get more ideal for local-first. Still you need a launcher and internet connection.

No you don't. There are plenty of games you can buy and go into the wilderness and play just fine offline. Just because game developers WANT you to be online so they can get data doesn't mean you NEED to be online.

Your point is correct, but OP is correct.

There are currently tens of thousands of games that are unplayable due to requiring pinging to a network/patch server which long ago was deprecated.

Forsaking patch requirements, just as many games are no longer playable due to incompatibility/abandoned OS, codebase, gamebreaking bugs.

In both of these scenarios, my "lifetime license" is no longer usable through no action of my own, and breaks the lifetime license agreement. I shouldn't need to be into IT to understand how to keep a game I bought 5 years ago playable.

The solution to this "problem" for user, as offered by the corporate investment firms in control, is to offer rolling subscriptions that "keep your license alive", for some reason. Rather than properly charge for a service at time of purchase.

TLDR: Why move the goal posts further in favor of tech/IT/Videogame Investment firms?

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

#122

Post by magicalhippo »

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…

> There's no easy way to keep sync, either. Look at CAP theorem.

Sure there is, you just gotta exploit the multiverse[1]. Keep all the changes in their own branch aka timeline, and when there's some perceived conflict you just say "well in the timeline I'm from, the meeting was moved to 4pm".

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/upgsuk/expla...

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

#123

Post by recursivedoubts »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #24
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…

> There's no easy way to keep sync, either. Look at CAP theorem. You can decide which leg you can do without, but you can't solve the distributed computing "problem". Best is just be aware of what tradeoff you're making. Git has largely solved asynchronous decentralized collaboration, but it requires file formats that are ideally as human understandable as machine-readable, or at least diffable/mergable in a way wher…

“solved”

imagine asking a normie to deal with a merge conflict

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

#124

Post by andsoitis »

Lotus Notes and later Groove Networks (both brought to us courtesy Ray Ozzie) both provided a platform to create apps with data synchronizing as a first-class citizen.

The technology behind Groove now powers OneDrive and Microsoft 365.

Notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL_Notes

Groove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groove_Networks

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

#125

Post by Anonyneko »

ktosobcy wrote: post #53

I try to use those as much as possible. We ended up in this situation mostly because of the Google push to make everything an "web-app" with web-technologies instead of protocols... Anyone uses IMAP email? Works just fine (save for IMAP design but that's another story). Same with CalDAV. For stydy I use Anki and it has brilliant sync (it can even automatically/automagaically merge study changes when I study some item…

With Anki the sync works perfectly until it doesn't and the app asks you to choose the copy you want to keep. Thankfully it doesn't happen often and hasn't caused any trouble for me, but it (seemingly) has no options for manual conflict resolution.

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

#126

Post by dboreham »

While the article is about eventual consistency, the real reason local web apps haven't become popular is that current browsers don't support them. Any code running in the browser has to come from some url. The server at that url is assumed to control everything. Any data stored locally might vanish any time, and can't be accessed by code loaded from any other url. So while you might like the idea of "just running code on my computer via the browser to do something useful" what you're actually doing is providing a way for whoever controls the web server to do whatever they want on your computer (modulo what Google wants). Since any idea of an independent app running on your computer is a fiction, there's no need to even attempt to solve the eventual consistency problems. Just have the server that's in total control do your consistency.

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

#127

Post by chaostheory »

godshatter wrote: post #97
xorvoid wrote: post #23

I believe the lack of popularity is more of an economics problem. There are established business models for SaaS apps or freemium with ads. But, the business model for local-first apps is not as lucrative. Those who like the local-first model value features like: data-sovereignty, end-to-end encryption, offline usage, etc. These properties make existing business models hard-to-impossible to apply. My current thinking…

It's crazy that we live in a time when "pay with money and your data" or "pay with your eyeballs" are the only viable options and "pay with your money without your data" can't even be considered.

Someone has to prove that there’s a demand for paid local first subscriptions. Open source and tailscale can’t shoulder it all if you want more adoption.

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

#128

Post by marginalia_nu »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #123
marginalia_nu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no easy way to keep sync, either. Look at CAP theorem. You can decide which leg you can do without, but you can't solve the distributed computing "problem". Best is just be aware of what tradeoff you're making. Git has largely solved asynchronous decentralized collaboration, but it requires file formats that are ideally as human understandable as machine-readable, or at least diffable/mergable in a way wher…

“solved” imagine asking a normie to deal with a merge conflict

That's an UX issue with git, not really what's being discussed.

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

#129

Post by tetralobita »

card_zero wrote: post #59
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…

> nowadays you want to have information from other computers. Do I? What sort of information ... > shared calendars OK yes that would be a valid use, I can imagine some stressed executive with no signal in a tunnel wanting to change some planned event, but also to have the change superceded by an edit somebody else makes a few minutes later. > the weather But I don't usually edit the weather forecast. > a social medi…

in our company some team is trying to solve offline selling items dropping from stock, when become offline it syncs, there are price and stock changes to be sync.

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

#130

Post by dundarious »

raincole wrote: post #75
card_zero wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nowadays you want to have information from other computers. Do I? What sort of information ... > shared calendars OK yes that would be a valid use, I can imagine some stressed executive with no signal in a tunnel wanting to change some planned event, but also to have the change superceded by an edit somebody else makes a few minutes later. > the weather But I don't usually edit the weather forecast. > a social medi…

> offline-pretend-posted It's a far, far more complicated mental model than simply posting it. It'd be a huge barrier for normal users (even tech-savvy users, I'd say). People want to post it online and that's it. No one wants an app what requires its users to be aware of syncing state constantly unless they really have no choice. We pretend we can step on gas instead of mixing the gas with air and ignite it with a s…

Email clients had the outbox that was local only and then you pushed to send them all. Hiding the outbox is why some of these things seem fiddly to use, despite being conceptually very simple. This model would seem to work very well at least for non-collaborative changes like IG posts.
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