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Mighty Retrospective

blog.chaselambda.com

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Re: Mighty Retrospective

#61

Post by TylerE »

Kwpolska wrote: post #57
el_nahual wrote: post #46

I wish Mighty had succeeded for a different audience. The core value prop "make figma faster" was not very compelling--people who need to use Figma can buy a mac. You know who does struggle with slow computers and memory issues? Call center employees who have to run Front, Slack, Chrome, and probably one or two other electron-based apps. At our startup (not in USA), these issues are so bad we've ended up getting peop…

Reasonably priced PC laptops that can run Chrome and Electron do exist. Just don’t buy bottom of the barrel Celerons, instead target an i5 or a Ryzen 5 (or maybe a higher-end i3).

From my experience slow laptops are slow not because of the cpu (I mean, we’re not running a chess engine here…) but slow disks and slow/not enough RAM, which compounds the disk issue as soon as you start actively swapping… which in some of these is about as soon as the OS boots.

Like, I just loaded up the Best Buy app and 3 of their top 10 selling laptops only have 4GB of RAM. I haven’t used a computer with that little RAM in over a decade.

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#62

Post by phphphphp »

el_nahual wrote: post #46

I wish Mighty had succeeded for a different audience. The core value prop "make figma faster" was not very compelling--people who need to use Figma can buy a mac. You know who does struggle with slow computers and memory issues? Call center employees who have to run Front, Slack, Chrome, and probably one or two other electron-based apps. At our startup (not in USA), these issues are so bad we've ended up getting peop…

I agree with your core point that Mighty could have succeeded, but specific to your use-case: Mighty is “just” a nice layer on top of well-established remote-desktop technology, what pushed you towards M1 MacBooks instead of remote desktops? There’s lots of great options out there, comparable to Mighty on price (a little more management overhead, for sure, which is why Mighty was the ideal option — but still much more cost effective than buying MacBooks).

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#63

Post by eightysixfour »

el_nahual wrote: post #46

I wish Mighty had succeeded for a different audience. The core value prop "make figma faster" was not very compelling--people who need to use Figma can buy a mac. You know who does struggle with slow computers and memory issues? Call center employees who have to run Front, Slack, Chrome, and probably one or two other electron-based apps. At our startup (not in USA), these issues are so bad we've ended up getting peop…

Isn’t this just Venn or any of the dozens of other VDI providers?

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#64

Post by alexyz12 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #48
GMoromisato wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. IMO the core paradigm shift that needs to happen is for the software and infrastructure to become commoditized. The only way for cloud-everything to not be a nightmarish abuse of the end-users is for the mode of operation to change, from the current "data comes to the app", int…

There needs to be some reason for users to chose to run their code. Maybe if self hosted software was somehow even cheaper than cloud software? Or maybe they hear about their friend/cousin getting their data stolen by hosting it in the cloud? Or maybe its so much faster hosted at home that the cloud can't compete. Or especially if its easier to store it yourself than it is to store it in the cloud somehow. I wonder if self hosted software can compete on any of these metrics? - safety, cost, speed, convenience?

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#65

Post by yrgulation »

samwillis wrote: post #2

While I never really believed in Mighty as a concept, I think the technology has enormous potential in some industries. A robust, performant and versatile VNC like toolkit to enable traditionally desktop software to be made available in the cloud could be be very successful. There are many CAD, Visualisation, Rendering, Editing, and Simulation tools that are incredible CPU, GPU or Memory intensive that could be made…

For that to happen we first need proper internet connectivity, which lacks in most western countries.

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#66

Post by wmf »

TylerE wrote: post #61
Kwpolska wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonably priced PC laptops that can run Chrome and Electron do exist. Just don’t buy bottom of the barrel Celerons, instead target an i5 or a Ryzen 5 (or maybe a higher-end i3).

From my experience slow laptops are slow not because of the cpu (I mean, we’re not running a chess engine here…) but slow disks and slow/not enough RAM, which compounds the disk issue as soon as you start actively swapping… which in some of these is about as soon as the OS boots. Like, I just loaded up the Best Buy app and 3 of their top 10 selling laptops only have 4GB of RAM. I haven’t used a computer with that lit…

For the price of Mighty you could... buy RAM.

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#67

Post by wmf »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #55
gonehome wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> 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) Define "bad". I'm on a 2019 MB Pro with an i9 with 32G of ram. I pretty much never have browser performance issues that bother me. I have Chrome open with 2 windows and a total of 39 tabs, plus some other apps that people always like to bitch about resource-wise (S…

2019 MB Pro with an i9 with 32G of RAM

You know that's a very expensive laptop, right? Like more expensive than 99.9% of all laptops. Of course you don't have a problem.

I think Mighty was always a weird project that pretty much only solved a problem for people that would never be willing to pay for it.

Amen. If it could have been, say, $10/month or less it would have been great for people who can't afford a fast computer.

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#68

Post by TylerE »

wmf wrote: post #66
TylerE wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience slow laptops are slow not because of the cpu (I mean, we’re not running a chess engine here…) but slow disks and slow/not enough RAM, which compounds the disk issue as soon as you start actively swapping… which in some of these is about as soon as the OS boots. Like, I just loaded up the Best Buy app and 3 of their top 10 selling laptops only have 4GB of RAM. I haven’t used a computer with that lit…

For the price of Mighty you could... buy RAM.

Isn’t The ram on most laptops these days soldered in because it’s cheaper to build it that way then to actually build slots.

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#69

Post by Kwpolska »

TylerE wrote: post #61
Kwpolska wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonably priced PC laptops that can run Chrome and Electron do exist. Just don’t buy bottom of the barrel Celerons, instead target an i5 or a Ryzen 5 (or maybe a higher-end i3).

From my experience slow laptops are slow not because of the cpu (I mean, we’re not running a chess engine here…) but slow disks and slow/not enough RAM, which compounds the disk issue as soon as you start actively swapping… which in some of these is about as soon as the OS boots. Like, I just loaded up the Best Buy app and 3 of their top 10 selling laptops only have 4GB of RAM. I haven’t used a computer with that lit…

People want cheap things, and the manufacturers comply. But if you set a minimum baseline (i5/Ryzen 5 + SSD + 8 GB RAM), you’re unlikely to get a dud.

Re: Mighty Retrospective

#70

Post by mattbillenstein »

I appreciate the swing and I pointed this out early-on, but I wouldn't bet against Moore's Law - the hardware gets faster and cheaper. Back when they started 16GB was pretty high end, now it's more mainstream with 32GB being the high end...

And I think it's a very niche use case to have hundreds of tabs open - like, that's hoarding, like, just close some, you'll never get to all of that.

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