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Local-first software (2019)

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868 points gasull | 4 comments | 05 Jul 25 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.667s | source
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DataDaoDe ◴[05 Jul 25 17:02 UTC] No.44474024[source]▶
Yes a thousand percent! I'm working on this too. I'm sick of everyone trying to come up with a use case to get all my data in everyone's cloud so I have to pay a subscription fee to just make things work. I'm working on a fitness tracking app right now that will use the sublime model - just buy it, get updates for X years, sync with all your devices and use it forever. If you want updates after X years buy the newest version again. If its good enough as is - and that's the goal - just keep using it forever.

This is the model I want from 90% of the software out there, just give me a reasonable price to buy it, make the product good, and don't marry it to the cloud so much that its unusable w/out it.

There are also a lot of added benefits to this model in general beyond the data privacy (most are mentioned in the article), but not all the problems are solved here. This is a big space that still needs a lot of tooling to make things really easy going but the tech to do it is there.

Finally, the best part (IMHO) about local-first software is it brings back a much healthier incentive structure - you're not monetizing via ads or tracking users or maxing "engagement" - you're just building a product and getting paid for how good it is. To me it feels like its software that actually serves the user.

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tarpit_idea ◴[05 Jul 25 19:22 UTC] No.44474897[source]▶
Totally agree. If you don't mind - what tech stack are you using for your fitness tracking app? I'm particularly curious about how you handle cross-device sync :)
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zhec[dead post] ◴[05 Jul 25 19:35 UTC] No.44474975[source]▶
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1. lurking_swe ◴[05 Jul 25 21:16 UTC] No.44475619[source]▶
your comment is insane imo. some people talk that way in real life. it’s not their fault LLM’s were invented.
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2. gerdesj ◴[05 Jul 25 23:27 UTC] No.44476379[source]▶
Not so insane as it turns out - P is using the language of LLMs because english is a second language for them.

Perhaps you will not take umbrage when I point out that you use full stops (periods) but not bother with twitching a finger towards your shift key. I will guess you are using a phone/tablet and have to switch keyboard layouts to get something as exotic as a capital letter on the screen.

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3. Qwertious ◴[06 Jul 25 01:57 UTC] No.44477152[source]▶
The cost of spinning up a bot is ~$0, it's sensible to be suspicious in public.
4. lurking_swe ◴[07 Jul 25 19:58 UTC] No.44494061[source]▶
indeed, i often browse hacker news on mobile instead of my laptop.