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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?

#291

Post by Xelbair »

gwbas1c wrote: post #37
Xelbair wrote: post #14

Technical reasons are honestly overblown - it all boils down to one, business, reason - control. When you do serverside stuff you control everything. What users can do, and cannot do. This lets you both reduce support costs as it is easier to resolve issues even by ad-hoc db query, and more importantly - it lets you retroactively lock more and more useful features behind paywall. This is basically The DRM for your so…

> Technical reasons are honestly overblown Having built a sync product, it is dramatically simpler (from a technical standpoint) to require that clients are connected, send operations immediately to central location, and then succeed / fail there. Once things like offline sync are part of the picture, there's a whole set of infrequent corner cases that come in that are also very difficult to explain to non-technical…

but it is nothing that cannot be solved - if it was more profitable we would all be doing it.

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

#292

Post by dismalaf »

Honestly, apps that require the web to actually do the thing you want, but also work offline, are more or less useless. You're basically just faking that it works offline, it doesn't do the thing you want, and it's a PITA for everyone involved. And to try get this right when most of the world has reliable data connections all the time is a colossal waste of effort.

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

#293

Post by zahlman »

b_e_n_t_o_n wrote: post #264

Perhaps I'm missing something, but aren't local-first apps the overwhelming norm? Like if I think about the apps I use, my friends use etc, most of them are local. Unless the author means "local first web apps", which would make more sense. And I think the oxymoronic nature of a "local first web app" gives a clue as to their unpopularity.

> Like if I think about the apps I use, my friends use etc, most of them are local.

Ones that you have to pay for directly?

Aside from game devs it's hard for me to think of who the major players are in that space any more. And now even when the game has a single-player mode it seems to demand an Internet connection, whether for DRM reasons, "anti-cheat" (why do you care?), updates etc.

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

#294

Post by data-ottawa »

nenenejej wrote: post #202
chaostheory wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or split into 2 things: Most people have a Dropbox, Apple Storage, Google Storage or similar. A lot of people used to happily pay for desktop software. It is sort of a combo of those 2 things economically. Dropbox could sweep up here by being the provider of choice for offline apps. Defining the open protocol and supporting it. adding notifications and some compute. You then use Dropbox free for 1, 5, 10 offline apps…

iCloud kind of does this and is the suggested way to store app data files.

It’s not immune to file conflicts across your devices though.

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

#295

Post by b_e_n_t_o_n »

zahlman wrote: post #293
b_e_n_t_o_n wrote: post #264

Perhaps I'm missing something, but aren't local-first apps the overwhelming norm? Like if I think about the apps I use, my friends use etc, most of them are local. Unless the author means "local first web apps", which would make more sense. And I think the oxymoronic nature of a "local first web app" gives a clue as to their unpopularity.

> Like if I think about the apps I use, my friends use etc, most of them are local. Ones that you have to pay for directly? Aside from game devs it's hard for me to think of who the major players are in that space any more. And now even when the game has a single-player mode it seems to demand an Internet connection, whether for DRM reasons, "anti-cheat" (why do you care?), updates etc.

Even the apps I pay (or paid) for directly are local first. Eg the Adobe suite, Unity Pro, Affinity. Some, like Copilot, do require internet but there is no feasible way to get offline access for an online service.

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

#296

Post by m463 »

tonymet wrote: post #284

I wish we could get app developers to stop going online for every piece of content. Even my Tesla GPS map refuses to cache tiles it already has, so when connectivity goes down, my maps are blank. Or streaming media apps (like Peacock & Kanopy) reloading the previous screen from the server instead of keeping the rendered media list object resident. 95% of the content is already on the device, let's please encourage it…

> no major changes to the app design

I'm pretty convinced they just want more data.

for example, apple allows offline maps, but they expire the data because they want you dependent on them.

I'm pretty sure the tesla (google) tile data has hidden motives.

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

#297

Post by crazygringo »

b_e_n_t_o_n wrote: post #283
crazygringo wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context should be clear that this is talking exclusively about apps that store their data in the cloud. Local-first here means starting with a local data model that syncs to the cloud from the start, rather than an app that only works online.

What are some examples of popular apps that do this which aren't web apps, and could feasibly work offline? Every native app I use is local-first. Eg. Photoshop, Blender, Figma, Xcode, Zed, Kitty, Affinity Photo/Designer, Notes, Music, Calendar, Messenger, Maps, Email, etc.

I already explained: "exclusively about apps that store their data in the cloud".

So Photoshop, Blender, etc. -- these are not apps that store their data in the cloud. They're using filesystems. There's no sync. They're not local-first, they're just local.

But the Apple apps -- Notes, Music, Calendar -- they are very much local-first. Their source of truth is in iCloud when you activate that, but they fully work offline as well and then sync once there's a connection. This is completely different from e.g. Photoshop.

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

#298

Post by michaelsalim »

VikingCoder wrote: post #290
michaelsalim wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I'm building a presentation software[1] so it needs to work locally (can't afford lost of connection). But I also want it to be accessible from anywhere. Unfortunately those two things don't mesh that easily. The tech is getting there though. With things like hole punching or webrtc, P2P is getting pretty easy to implement. Though it's still a challenge to implement it in an actual project. I do believe that…

Really, why not use Tailscale?

Never said you shouldn't. Tailscale uses a bunch of different techniques including hole punching for it to work. If that's what you need, go ahead. I opted for Iroh for a few different reasons but Tailscale is an awesome choice too.

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

#299

Post by phkahler »

We are both offline with identical copies of the same document. I modify paragraph 3 of 5. You replace the same paragraph with a completely different one.

No clocks or CRDTs are going to automatically fix this. The right solution could be my edits, or your new replacement, or some merge, but there isn't any automatic way to do this is there?

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

#300

Post by whartung »

I dunno.

Storing your files on a synced folder (i.e. DropBox or something similar) can handle a lot of heavy lifting.

The use case is not simultaneous editing, folks typically aren’t working on things on different systems at the same time.

Given that as a basis, next, “save early, save often”. The app is “cloud ignorant”. It just sees a local folder. Most of the syncing systems sync up quite quickly, so even if you save it on your desktop and pick up your phone, it’s probably already synced up. “For free”.

Finally your app needs to be cognizant that the file can change behind its back. When it fires up it reloads, or prompts the user, or whatever.

Adding in auto save and versioning like Apple does with their apps, and magic happens (though I honestly don’t know how the Apple apps respond if the saved document is changed underneath it).

There’s a difference between simultaneous and background changes. No reason to over complicate things for the vast majority of use cases.

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