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Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

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

#71

Post by OfflineSergio »

I’ve been working on https://with.audio which is a local app.

I think there should be way more local apps with sync capabilities. I haven’t finished the sync feature in WithAudio and you have very nice ideas there. Specially the eventual consistency. That’s what will work.

But I must say for sure the most difficult part of local apps is debugging customer issues. For someone who is used to logs and traces and metrics and most of users using a one version of the code in the backend, debugging an issue in customers computer on an old version without much insight (without destroying all your premises of privacy) is very challenging.

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

#72

Post by RajT88 »

SilverbeardUnix wrote: post #64

1. People don't work alone and need to collaborate 2. People value convenience over privacy and security 3. Cloud is easy.

Do not forget - cloud makes apps easier to monetize via ads and selling user data.

Business trumps perfect software engineering almost every time.

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

#73

Post by alextingle »

anon1395 wrote: post #55

Personally I think PWAs are a bit confusing for consumers as they think "It's a website, i won't be able to use it offline." and if they get reminded that they can use it offline they usually forget.

Why would they think "its a web-site"? PWAs just look like normal phone apps.

In fact, many "normal" phone apps are basically just a web-site inside a thin wrapper. So the difference is largely academic in many cases.

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

#75

Post by raincole »

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…

> 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 spark plug until we need to change the damn plug.

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

#76

Post by marginalia_nu »

poszlem wrote: post #58
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…

Git solved this by pushing the syncing burden onto people. It’s no surprise, merge conflicts are famously tricky and always cause headaches. But for apps, syncing really ought to be handled by the machine.

If you want local-first, conflict resolution is something you're unlikely to be able to avoid. The other option is to say "whoops" and arbitrarily throw away a change when there is a conflict due to a spotty wifi or some such.

Fortunately, a lot of what chafes with git are UX issues more than anything else. Its abstractions are leaky, and its default settings are outright bad. It's very much a tool built by and for kernel developers with all that entails.

The principle itself has a lot of redeemable qualities, and could be applied to other similar syncing problems without most of the sharp edges that come with the particular implementation seen in git.

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

#77

Post by Sharlin »

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…

Well, the first kind of PC app, anyway. For decades before that, programs were run on time-sharing mainframes via remote terminals.

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

#78

Post by criddell »

jjcob wrote: post #52
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…

Git works, but it leaves conflict resolution up to the user. It's good for a tool for professional users, but I don't see it being adopted for mainstream use.

How can you avoid leaving conflict resolution up to the user?

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

#79

Post by jlarocco »

As a user the simple answer is that I'll always use a regular application instead of a "local-first" web app when I have the ability.

"Local-first apps" are the worst of everything - crappy, dumbed down web UI; phoning home, telemetry, and other privacy violations; forced upgrades; closed source, etc.

At work, I don't have a choice, so it's Google Docs or Office 365 or whatever. And in that context it actually makes sense to have data stored on some server somewhere because it's not really my data but the company's. But at home I'll always choose the strictly offline application and share my data and files some other way.

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

#80

Post by jakelazaroff »

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…

I wouldn't call local Excel/Word/etc "local-first". The "-first" part implies that the network is used for secondary functionality, but the apps you're talking about are fully offline. IMO local-first definitionally requires some form of networked multi-device collaboration or sync.
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