The place where they really could have won is iOS, where browsers aren't allowed to use their own rendering engine, and system specs still lagged behind the M1.
Mighty Retrospective
31–40 of 107 posts
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#32>CPU: We gave users a 16 core machine just for their browser, but it turns out that the web is largely limited by single core performance (think JS, layout, html parsing, etc). I'm pretty sure that javascript being largely single-threaded was well known knowledge since day 1. Did they not know this? Did they think that mulit-threaded javascript was just around the corner?
JS is single threaded, but does a browser use that same thread for rendering, animations, web workers, network etc.? How much front end JS code is intensely computational vs. simply spending most of its time waiting on a callback?
Genuine question - I might see if I can find out next time I have to do a performance profiling in Chrome!
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#33Streaming Chrome with some value adds must have been a short-term product right? It could only have existed until PCs caught up on processing speed (Apple's M1?). I wonder what vision did Suhail pitch to PG to deserve high praise. Because this can't be it.
The ultimate vision is/was to have everything run in the cloud. Imagine if you could run any app on the most powerful machine in the world. See: https://blog.mightyapp.com/mightys-secret-plan-to-invent-the... In my opinion, this is the right goal, but I don't think this can be done by running existing apps in the cloud (and remoting their UI). Instead, I think we need a new cloud-native platform so that any app can b…
as pmarca is fond of saying, ideas are never wrong, just early. i bet at some point in the future a New Mighty will come along and work
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#34> In addition, Suhail had been trying out building a new product that was showing to be a reasonable alternative bet. I see they've been distracted with AI art just like everyone else and had to jump on that bandwagon :). Don't get me wrong -- Stable Diffusion is probably the fastest progressing thing on the internet in decades.
yeah but do they have some core insight that makes them better at building the 34th Stable Diffusion UI compared to the others?
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#35previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33583830 4 days ago
interesting that https://www.mightyapp.com/ still has not been updated with any mention of shutdown
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#36>CPU: We gave users a 16 core machine just for their browser, but it turns out that the web is largely limited by single core performance (think JS, layout, html parsing, etc). I'm pretty sure that javascript being largely single-threaded was well known knowledge since day 1. Did they not know this? Did they think that mulit-threaded javascript was just around the corner?
JS is single threaded, but does a browser use that same thread for rendering, animations, web workers, network etc.? How much front end JS code is intensely computational vs. simply spending most of its time waiting on a callback? Genuine question - I might see if I can find out next time I have to do a performance profiling in Chrome!
[deleted]
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#37>CPU: We gave users a 16 core machine just for their browser, but it turns out that the web is largely limited by single core performance (think JS, layout, html parsing, etc). I'm pretty sure that javascript being largely single-threaded was well known knowledge since day 1. Did they not know this? Did they think that mulit-threaded javascript was just around the corner?
JS is single threaded, but does a browser use that same thread for rendering, animations, web workers, network etc.? How much front end JS code is intensely computational vs. simply spending most of its time waiting on a callback? Genuine question - I might see if I can find out next time I have to do a performance profiling in Chrome!
AFAIK, rendering and animations are on the same thread as JS.
web workers have their own thread, but I think adoption is low.
Network requests are async (JS doesn't have to wait for the network request for it to do other things), but JS can still only start one network request at a time.
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#38I always found the idea to be bizarre. The group of people for which a browser is truly horrendously slow would be on something like a low-end Windows laptop. From mid-end and upwards it's fine (or good enough) and for Mac users pretty much never an issue. The people with such crappy hardware are exactly the group to not be able to afford 35$ a month. That's like the price of 3 or 4 streaming services combined. Just…
I had a similar impression of it, the best I can come up with is I think it was a bet based on a prediction of the future that is kinda true, but just doesn't matter as much as they thought.
1. Personal computers are dead and just a means to access a browser via dumb terminals
2. Applications will be Figma style - web based entirely.
3. Intel/AMD chips are bad and not getting that much better (this one is true, but missed the mark entirely because of Apple silicon throwing a curve ball)
4. Given that your personal computer is basically a dumb terminal to a web browser you could imagine a world where it doesn't matter and it's worth paying $35/mo for a super computer to run your web apps streamed to whatever local hardware you're using, since your local machine is basically useless as a machine and only serves to load a web browser (which is where your actual applications are). This super computer will also remember state so any devices you access mighty on is exactly as you left it. Long term, this could end with a Chromebook like devices of some sort that just connects to mighty and are really nice low power hardware.
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Personal bias aside (I hate this future and I'm actively working on software trying to bring personal computing back in a from first principles networked way) - it was a bet on trends and fits squarely into the PG concept of a good startup being a bad sounding idea that might have recently became good because of changes in the environment that have not yet been really recognized. I think Apple made it less relevant. I also agree there's a weird issue of who is the actual target market at that price point (the exact people that would maybe need it can also afford good hardware).
That and there is obviously fertile ground in AI right now and the founder sees a bigger opportunity there with a lot of low hanging fruit.
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#39>CPU: We gave users a 16 core machine just for their browser, but it turns out that the web is largely limited by single core performance (think JS, layout, html parsing, etc). I'm pretty sure that javascript being largely single-threaded was well known knowledge since day 1. Did they not know this? Did they think that mulit-threaded javascript was just around the corner?
If each of the 100 open tabs are all run in separate threads, then there are a 100 active threads. I think what TFA means to convey is, the user is interacting with only a single tab at any given point in time; hence any percieved gains are bounded by single core perf. And that there weren't that many web-native apps using service workers to make any material difference to the UX to justify the cost of running just Chrome on a 16-core i9 machine.
Re: Mighty Retrospective
#40Streaming Chrome with some value adds must have been a short-term product right? It could only have existed until PCs caught up on processing speed (Apple's M1?). I wonder what vision did Suhail pitch to PG to deserve high praise. Because this can't be it.
Or people started closing tabs more frequently and/or used something other than chrome.