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I decided to stop working on Mighty

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Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#221

Post by piva00 »

lkbm wrote: post #136
aniforprez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really REALLY not sure how it makes sense to pay that much for a remote browser unless there's something I'm missing which I have to think is the case. What was the actual hook here? Surely a remote browser cannot have been worth it for 240-360 dollars a year? Wouldn't it have been more worth it to simply buy an M1 Mac or a Surface? How are people suffering from slow browsers that much?

> Wouldn't it have been more worth it to simply buy an M1 Mac or a Surface? Yes, probably, but I would note that a cheap M1 Mac is 4x the annual cost you cited for the browser, and if the browser is 95% of what you use a laptop for, getting the same perf boost for 25% the cost sounds like a good value prop. Granted, a laptop should last more than a year, but presumably it starts to show it's age in under four, wherea…

I had Macbooks that lasted 5 years (2010-2015) pretty well, my current MBA M1 is almost 2 years old and I don't see myself needing to swap it for another 2-3 at least. My girlfriend still uses her MBA from 2014.

I don't really see how I could justify paying 20-25% of the price of my laptop per year, that I use for much more than just browsing, to have a faster browsing experience. And I'm a power user (SWE, etc.) compared to the mainstream consumer, the market for this product seems to be extremely niche/small.

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#222

Post by gleb-arestov »

IceWreck wrote: post #119

Called it here back when it launched. Streaming video of a slightly more powerful browser in a browser (electron) never made sense to me. And the few people who really had that usecase could just use a lightweight container running chromium + guacamole on a nearby server. Okay I'm sure Mighty used cool tech to make it faster than just that (idk how it worked but maybe they were transmitting changed HTML) but at its c…

I've just looked into Mighty. It has delays for hover css effects & scrolling. Also it has "Debug > Enable H264 encoding" option. So Mighty streams video.

I think replicating DOM & sending diffs instead of video should 1) saves resources on encoding for server 2) saves decoding on client 3) send much lower data 4) feels much better since instant scrolling/hover (something like https://www.rrweb.io/)

I'm indie/solo making Linkkraft browser (to make a living from it). Browser to be effective researcher & collector. It visualizes your steps as tree and makes html snapshot for your each step (even steps in SPAs like twitter). https://arestov.github.io/linkkraft-notes/comparing/linkkraf... https://arestov.github.io/linkkraft-notes/trails-tree-plus-o...

As side effect of snapshots you can confidently unload documents & save CPU/memory.

Looking forward to grow that snapshotting part into DOM streaming. So you can run "browser server" on your own PC, while having laptop fast & cool. With almost 0 delays and without worrying about privacy.

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#223

Post by pclmulqdq »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #73
Kwpolska wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> use your old laptop > M1 To have a M1 chip, you need a new laptop. A new Intel/AMD laptop would bring you plenty performance not to require remote desktop as a service.

I looked into remote desktop services but in the long run you're cheaper off just buying a computer

Even for gaming and workstation use, this seems to be true. Last year, the value proposition of remote desktops looked great, but it turns out price/performance of all computing parts was at an all-time high.

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#224

Post by robocat »

smaudet wrote: post #181
Zopieux wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it deeply unsettling that you'd consider it normal/common to upgrade 4 digit (is that all Apple?) devices every 2 years, or that folks would need so many different form factors in the first place. Just thinking of the literal mountains of ewaste gives me goosebumps.

I don't consider it normal at all. Seems like the words of an out-of-touch upper cruster. Most people make a 1k$ purchase last decades. Enthusiasts may be dropping 5-10k$ but not your average joe.

WTF? Mostly you can't even use consumer technology from "decades" ago - it's incompatible.

In 2005 the average size of a TV was 30 inches. Two decades ago a TV had no HDMI, and it only received analog NTSC or PAL.

A phone was 2G - 3G was the thing about to be but mostly not there yet. One decade ago the iPhone 5 was released.

An Apple iBook cost $1200 with 128MB of ram and a PPC processor: https://apple-history.com/ibook_mid_2002

Maybe a stereo is usable - although for midrange equipment the capacitors have probably dried out and you certainly won't be getting digital FM.

You would need to be very poor if you can't get working hand-me-downs from a decade ago.

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#225

Post by bombcar »

svantana wrote: post #206
bitwize wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to single core, M1 smokes EVERYTHING. And browser performance is gated by single core performance.

Not generally true. On geekbench, both Intel and AMD have offerings that outscore both M1 and M2 on single core. https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

Likely they meant "smoked on power per watt" which is useful on a laptop, not so much on a desktop or an always-plugged in laptop.

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#226

Post by guruz »

ec109685 wrote: post #102

Mighty was conceived at a really dark time in Mac laptop performance. The combination of Intel Mac Laptops that had horrible thermal characteristics, browsers that didn’t do anything to throttle background tabs, bloated websites and limited memory created a perfect storm of awful performance that Mighty could address. Almost all of that isn’t true anymore (besides the bloated websites which browsers manage better), w…

I love the "Auto Tab Discard" Firefox extension.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#227

Post by sod »

bitwize wrote: post #150
dinvlad wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, desktop Intel/AMD chips still beat M1, and are more versatile for gaming etc.

When it comes to single core, M1 smokes EVERYTHING. And browser performance is gated by single core performance.

It did when it came out. But it got already leapfrogged. Calculating fibonacci(45) with a recursive javascript function takes 13s on my m1pro and 7s on my ryzen 7600x. Profiling our angular app in chrome the initial render takes 200ms on m1pro and 130ms on my ryzen 7600x.

Apple silicon is still the master of performance per watt. But raw performance: It really was just tsmc 5nm what gave apple the edge. Apple will shine again when they sit exclusivly on tsmc 3nm, but until then, not so much.

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#228

Post by bombcar »

Zopieux wrote: post #155
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product, "compute pixels on powerful machine -> render on thin client", makes much more sense if you don't try to monetize by being a cloud landlord, but you let the users own that powerful machine, make money through hardware, and help them with the software, make money through support, no subscriptions, no rent-seeking. Think at the level of a family: 2 parents, 2 children which means: 4 smartphones, 2÷3 laptop…

I find it deeply unsettling that you'd consider it normal/common to upgrade 4 digit (is that all Apple?) devices every 2 years, or that folks would need so many different form factors in the first place. Just thinking of the literal mountains of ewaste gives me goosebumps.

Most people who upgrade on a cycle also sell on a cycle - if you buy the new hotness today, and sell it in two years, it'll still be relatively hot. The old one isn't thrown away, it's just sold to someone else.

People do it with cars (even if they're not leasing, which is explicitly doing it).

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#229

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

smaudet wrote: post #219
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Adults spend $1,200 a year on consumer electronics and own, on average, 25 CE products per household, according to a study by the CEA." [1] In a family of 4 [2], this can mean somewhere around $3÷4,000 per year, or $6÷8,000 every 2 years. [1] https://www.cnet.com/culture/study-u-s-adults-spend-1200-a-y... [2] The average US family size is 2.51 [3] while average worldwide is 4.9 [4] [3] https://www.statista.com/stati…

"electronic gizmos" is not screens... I can think of quite a few electronics I spent money this year which did not include any screen device. Again, these stats are misleading, maybe dishonest. My "device" budget we'll call it has been less than 1000$ over the past 5 years, and that is with spending a fair amount on non-screen decives, which are electronic in nature but not investments in dedicated computing like you…

"Consumer electronics" consist of "telephones, televisions, and calculators, then audio and video recorders and players, game consoles, mobile phones, personal computers and MP3 players", "GPS, automotive electronics (car stereos), video game consoles, electronic musical instruments (e.g., synthesizer keyboards), karaoke machines, digital cameras, and video players", "smart light fixtures and appliances, digital cameras, camcorders, cell phones, and smartphones", "virtual reality head-mounted display goggles, smart home devices that connect home devices to the Internet, streaming devices, and wearable technology." [1] Most of them have screens.

As a general heuristic, one single person's decision tree is rather irrelevant in the long open game of average spending behaviours.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_electronics

Re: I decided to stop working on Mighty

#230

Post by IceWreck »

jacurtis wrote: post #158
anhncommenter25 wrote: post #95

Mighty was like compute arbitrage. The bet was that you could buy compute at cloud prices, resell it to end users, and since this is cheaper than buying consumer compute in the form of workstations, laptops, & tablets, you can pocket the difference. I can't think of a bigger slice of consumer compute than browser workload; so if the scheme doesn't work there, it won't work for anything. My conclusion is that compute…

I interviewed at a very successful startup last year that was basically doing the exact same thing as mighty. But they were selling it as primarily a security advantage (since its effectively an air gap computer) with additional advantages to performance. The product itself was basically identical to Mighty. However, because it was marketed as a Security tool, they got customers from 9 of the 10 largest world banks,…

Can you send a link please ?
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