[cryptos]

This article looks a bit superficial to me. The cloud has definitely advantages, like having the same data on all devices and it provides some kind of backup. The mentioned downsides could be adressed by better software archticture or e2e encryption.

[reustle]

Obsidian is just one example of how powerful local apps can be with a generic sync behind them (icloud sync, gdrive, obsidian sync, etc)

[palata]

> This article looks a bit superficial to me.

Yes it is, I totally agree.

> The cloud has definitely advantages, like having the same data on all devices

That's not an advantage for the user at all, is it?

> and it provides some kind of backup.

You can backup user data in an offline-first app. Better even: you can let the user backup their data themselves!

> The mentioned downsides could be adressed by better software archticture or e2e encryption.

The article is superficial, but they mention at least one thing that cannot be addressed this way: what happens when you are offline or have a very slow connection?

It really boils down to one simple fact, IMHO: offline-first is harder to do. It is better for the users, but it is harder to do for the company doing it, which means it is more expensive. Companies are there for the profit, not to please the users.

[gbalduzzi]

> That's not an advantage for the user at all, is it

Of course it is an advantage. I tend to access most of my apps and services from both the PC and the smartphone, having data shared across the two is a deal breaker for the very vast majority of them.

[palata]

oh sorry, I understood "running the exact same code everywhere".

Sure, sync between devices is a nice feature. But it can totally be implemented with offline-first apps.

[dust-jacket]

> Better even: you can let the user backup their data themselves!

Whilst that's better for a small audience of techy types (most here, I'd guess), you know that's not true for most users, right?

Like people used to lose work on hard drives and laptops that they hadn't backed up all the time and its much, much rarer now (OK, I don't have data beyond anecdata but still).

[palata]

> you know that's not true for most users, right?

I do yes. It's good to have a choice. Many times the reason there is not a proper local export is that it would take more work to implement properly, and it doesn't bring money to the company.

Again: companies exist to maximise profit. When making the product worse (or not making it better) improves their margin, they go for that. They don't care about the users, that's a big lie. A company fundamentally cares about profit. If competition or regulations mean that their profit is correlated to the users satisfaction, then they will have to work for that. But they don't do it "because they care about the users", ever.

[bombcar]

The better software architecture is huge - if done right. It's the difference between cloud-only, local-only, and local-first. Not all apps are entirely easy as local-first, but you can often get 80-90% of what you need as that; and leave sync and collisions as rare situations to be handled manually.