[raw_anon_1111]

We’ve already been through this cycle before SaaS. Why would every company want to go back to the days where you had to have an IT department to manage your apps?

Real businesses aren’t going to over optimize on something that cost $10 per seat.

If it’s “always proven wrong “, is this going to be “The year of Linux on the Desktop”? Is “the iPad going to fail because it doesn’t run Flash?”? Are we going to start browsing the internet on our TVs using set top boxes to get on the “Information Super highway”?

Oh yeah and let’s not forget that the iPod had “less space than the Nomad and no wireless” and was “lame”.

Or don’t forget that Dropbox was going to fail because “For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”

I can go on about Dvorak’s comment in 1984 “The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse'. There is no evidence that people want to use these things”

Or Michael Dell’s infamous “Apple should just shut down the company and give th money back to shareholders”

[austin-cheney]

Remember that data/content is king as the paradigm of business on the web? Its where we have been since the late 90s. Its the advertising economy. Both business and individual consumers don't want to pay for it any more. Self-hosted applications with a cloud premium upgrade are the new business model. For example why bother with all the invasive nonsense of Facebook if a person can self-host something that works better and share it with their real life contacts at their discretion?

The IPod won because it had the Apple app store. People don't need the app store to acquire high quality content any more and they certainly don't want their content locked into the limitations of leased access to some distribution model.

[raw_anon_1111]

Right, businesses don’t want to pay $10/seat for SaaS but they want to create server rooms in their offices and hire a bunch of IT people to support it?

> Self-hosted applications with a cloud premium upgrade are the new business model

That’s not happening for any company. Where pray tell are these companies “self hosting” and supporting their business that they are getting a better deal than their per seat licensing cost? Who is supporting their systems?

> For example why bother with all the invasive nonsense of Facebook if a person can self-host something that works better and share it with their real life contacts at their discretion?

So everyone is going to be a server admin and host software and set up their NAT correctly so they can access it via their home internet when their on their phones using their 30 Mpbd upload speeds from their cable modem?

Are people going to start running their own servers now?

> The IPod won because it had the Apple app store

That’s also not true. The iPod was released in 2001, the iTunes Music Store wasn’t released until 2003. As late as 2007 Steve Jobs said that only 5% of music on iPods came from iTunes in his famous “Thoughts on Music”

[austin-cheney]

You don’t look for decentralized self sufficiency by looking at random large companies. You find it by looking at the self hosting products and seeing who their paying customers are.

[raw_anon_1111]

And that’s an even worse argument, if large companies don’t want to self host, how many small companies do you think want to manage servers? Where are they going to put them when many don’t have an office?