[HN Gopher] My Return to Desktop Applications
___________________________________________________________________
My Return to Desktop Applications
Author : samemail88
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-07-07 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ashlan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ashlan.com)
| [deleted]
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I have pretty much always hated web apps. I never used a webmail
| client as my primary mail interface, even. It was Eudora, or
| Outlook, or Mail.app.
|
| Local, _native_ apps are just better. They 're faster, they can
| better respect platform interface and behavior conventions, and
| you can use them on an airplane.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Personally I don't see it as a general trend because its
| uneconomical and I think the notion of 'ownership of data' is
| confused.
|
| One issue is that local and online isn't an either/or situation.
| People bring up keepass and self-hosting for example, but pretty
| much any online pw manager stores your data _both_ locally and
| online, and you can export it. Going local only or self-managing
| my data has no benefit to me.
|
| Second point is about control. We have encryption nowadays. I'm
| always confused when people hide their password vault or throw it
| on a next cloud home instance or something. The entire point of
| encryption is to enable the transport of secure data across
| insecure or adversarial channels. You can either own things and
| keep them secret, or encrypt them. Doing both kind of defeats the
| purpose of the latter.
|
| Third thing is that empirically speaking, Google has a better
| track record of not losing my stuff than I do, so I think there's
| also a lot of illusions going on when people think that data is
| more safe if they have close on hand.
| mejutoco wrote:
| > The entire point of encryption is to enable the transport of
| secure data across insecure or adversarial channels. You can
| either own things and keep them secret, or encrypt them. Doing
| both kind of defeats the purpose of the latter.
|
| An scenario where encrypting locally makes sense is protecting
| confidential data when an attacker has physical access. For
| example, encrypting your disk so that losing your laptop in the
| train does not expose all your local files.
| gspencley wrote:
| Google has a worse track record of not losing my stuff than I
| do, but admittedly I don't use too many Google services.
|
| Two examples:
|
| I had a YouTube channel that was created before Google bought
| YouTube and switched to using/requiring Google Accounts. That
| channel/account became orphaned and I could no longer gain
| access to it. I contacted YouTube support and the only remedy
| they could offer me was to serve a DMCA notice to have the
| content removed.
|
| I used Google Play and had bought music through the service.
| When they shut down the service I lost music that I had paid
| for. Meanwhile I still have a local mp3 library that has some
| content in it that has persisted on various hard drives since
| the 90s.
| dewey wrote:
| Running local offline applications made a lot more sense before
| we had multiple devices (phones, tables) home computer, work
| computer.
|
| If I want to use a bookmarking tool I want to use the same tool
| to store entries in during my work day. I'd also want to check
| something if I'm outside with a friend and want to show them
| something I bookmarked a week ago.
| gspencley wrote:
| For those of us who don't like to be on our smart phones all
| the time, who keep work and personal strictly separate, who
| don't travel often (and when we do we leave our tech at home
| because a vacation is to get away), who prefer to keep their
| data local and outside the hands of 3rd parties, it has really
| sucked over the last 10 - 15 years to see the entire industry
| go all in on SaaS everything.
|
| I use Linux and FOSS mostly. I always have anyway, but it's
| nice to be able to still be in control of things while the
| Apple and Microsoft worlds keep pushing Cloud and SaaS on their
| customers (last time I installed Windows on a dual boot I
| needed a Microsoft account just to log in to MY computer ...
| WTF?!?!?!). And for work I need an Apple ID to use my
| MacBook... at all. WHY?!
| dewey wrote:
| > And for work I need an Apple ID to use my MacBook... at all
|
| Why? You can use the computer perfectly fine without an Apple
| ID.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Yeah while it is genuinely the substance of nightmares with
| Windows 10+ with its insistence upon using a remote account.
| But Mac OS will ask once and it's perfectly skippable.
|
| Of course, if you wish to access iCloud or the App Store,
| it's required. But in fairness to Apple they don't push it in
| the same sneaky way as MS.
| samemail88 wrote:
| Different use cases for different people. When I do real web
| surfing, its usually on the computer. When I'm on my phone, its
| light surfing (finding a restaurant address, etc). Also, if you
| really want it sync between two computers, you can use
| Syncthing or Dropbox.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You can do sync via e2e and protect it from service providers,
| or let users provide their own sync (which they can self host
| or use a paid service).
| GabrieleR wrote:
| I enjoined the ending paragraph tone. Alien like remark on the
| desktop app emergence and rising popularity after 2000.
|
| On my end: being born two years before 2000, makes me a desktop
| apps powered man and frankly I've been moving away from them. I'm
| seeking order and density so I've moved to the dark side of the
| spectrum, towards clis.
|
| There's hope in TUI like apps: like cashiers softwares terminals
| which displays some of both extremes. Until GUI are able to
| visually convoy meaningful symbols without ever using explicitly
| written characters, there's little gain in using them more the a
| solely characters driven interface.
|
| Thise are personal considerations,
|
| Hopefully I'm just a maniac that enjoy that intimate vibe
| interacting with a machine rather than clicking it.
| movedx wrote:
| > ... so I've moved to the dark side of the spectrum, towards
| clis
|
| Do you mean the best side? CLIs are were the power is at,
| because it's the only place you can convert human thought into
| instructions the computer can understand. It's the only place
| raw desire can be converted into a string of demands that the
| computer can meet. GUIs offer a static sub-set of this
| functionality in exchange for accessibility of the masses
| (which is fine... Instagram doesn't need to be a CLI tool.)
|
| > There's hope in TUI like apps: like cashiers softwares
| terminals
|
| When I worked in a Vodafone call centre many, many moons ago,
| we had a system actually like this. The F1-F12 function keys
| were critical and the entire thing was insanely fast. They
| eventually switched to a web based solution and it was
| terrible.
|
| Modern technologies favour the technologist, not the end
| user... they just happen to like it because they have no
| choice. GUIs, the shite they're built on, hold a monopoly.
| layer8 wrote:
| Most comments are about owning your data or running your own
| server. But what's also important is decoupling the mechanism of
| distributing or syncing the data (for access from different
| locations/clients) from actually working with the data.
| Basically, this is the separation between file system and
| application.
|
| The separation has two benefits: One can work with the data
| independently from internet access, and one can choose between
| different applications that understand the data format, including
| writing your own, without having to depend on a third party.
| Controlling what is shared is then also independent from the
| chosen application.
|
| Lastly, native applications can have the benefit of improved
| usability by adhering to the platform conventions and having
| better integration into native features.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > one can choose between different applications that understand
| the data format, including writing your own
|
| Which is arguably "just" a much deeper form of "owning your
| data." One that I wholeheartedly agree with by the way.
|
| By the way, I think what the author should have phrased it as
| is "local first" applications.
| samemail88 wrote:
| Exactly. It's like KeePassXC. It's a local app but the syncing
| of your password file is on you. You can choose to sync it
| however you want. You can choose to use Dropbox/Google
| Drive/etc or choose not to sync at all. The benefit you have a
| choice and you have complete control of the data/file. Nobody
| can take that away from you.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| look dude, I don't care what you do or don't do
| dragontamer wrote:
| I think one of the major times to use Desktop applications is
| when performance is critical.
|
| Video games are the key example: all video games are competing
| against other games for what comes down to more complicated
| physics calculations (often light-based physics: "more realistic"
| shadows from Raytracing, or "cooler" shaders like Dragonball
| FighterZ / Guilty Gear (very "unrealistic", but clearly requires
| modern GPU-shaders to calculate).
|
| Though Google tried to get video games "into the cloud", it still
| required data-centers full of high-end GPUs... and even then had
| latency issues.
|
| Other performance critical applications include Stockfish Chess,
| LeelaZero Go (and KataGo), Blender 3d modeling, etc. etc. Having
| the user "spend the money on more compute" is economically a more
| feasible move, than centralizing compute costs to a server
| somewhere (especially costly GPU-hosting).
|
| --------
|
| Good news! There's plenty of performance-critical applications
| waiting to be explored.
|
| But if you just need to deploy a simple application with low
| compute costs, centralizing the compute into a single server (or
| even mild decentralization through the Javascript interpreter) is
| good enough.
| groby_b wrote:
| Have you... read the article? Like, at all?
|
| They are specifically talking about the issue of data
| ownership, not performance. They are talking from a user
| perspective, not from a developer perspective. And they are
| specifically not talking about how centralizing is "good
| enough" - because it fails exactly at the data ownership point.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I have read it, and stand by what I say.
|
| Desktop applications shine in this performance situation.
| Video games, 3d renderers, chess analysis, go analysis, deep
| learning, compiling, video editing.
|
| -----------
|
| If we're talking about "Data moving with you wherever you
| go", that was a Floppy Disk back in the day. If you want
| bookmarks to be portable in some kind of modern day setting,
| you'd store it on your phone and connect that up with your
| Desktop-app, or maybe keep it on a USB drive in your pocket.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| 3d renders might win in the cloud because the default could
| be a render farm.
|
| they could also be running on the top GPUs where you might
| locally have some low-end notebook.
|
| I haven't used it but as one example there is Clara.io and
| even if Clara.io isn't perfect it at least shows a path
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| sorry but the convenience is way too much for the vast majority
| of people to have to download desktop and access it. everybody is
| content being able to do it through the phone.
| sirjaz wrote:
| People would download the desktop app and content if it existed
| rather than using a webapp. Look at mobile, people want actual
| apps not webapps
| diego_moita wrote:
| Wrong.
|
| The real issue isn't Desktop vs. Web, it is "people don't want to
| run their own servers".
|
| Take email: with Dovecot, Postfix and SpamAssasin anyone can
| build their own email server. Almost no one does.
|
| With Syncthing or Owncloud anyone can build their own Google
| Drive, iCloud or OneDrive. Very few do.
|
| There are alternatives to WhatsApp/Telegram where you'd create
| your own server (e.g. Matrix). Almost no one uses them.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I ran my own email server for a while and to be frank, it was a
| pain in the butt. Even though I spent a lot of time reading up
| on the proper way to set things up and tried to apply that as
| well as I was able, there was this lingering feeling that
| something somewhere was misconfigured, if not from a mail
| authentication/anti-spam standpoint, then from a network
| vulnerability one, and of course it needed to be continually
| maintained with patches, config updates, etc.
|
| Eventually I gave up and moved to Fastmail. The few dollars per
| month are worth it.
|
| Syncthing on the other hand I found pretty reasonable when I
| still had need for it, with my only gripe being that the only
| UI surfaced by several clients is a webpage which feels a bit
| janky.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Many people run their own NAS which is the non-cloud
| alternative to something like Google Drive.
|
| Running your own email server is a pain, having a client that
| pulls down your emails and stores them on a NAS so that your
| email is only briefly stored in the cloud is not a pain.
|
| Never used WhatsApp or Telegram so no idea what the alternative
| for those is.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| You're taking applications that are pretty inherently network-
| connected, like chat and sync. Yes, those make very little
| sense without a server. Although syncthing in particular will
| work just fine actually.
|
| But a lot of things don't require internet connectivity at all,
| not inherently. They largely stay on one device and that's
| fine. If they're to be shared between people or devices, _very_
| often attaching them to an email is better than "share this
| link with your friends (all they'll have to do to see it is
| sign up for our service so Growth can report those sweet sweet
| activations)"
| RajT88 wrote:
| These are server apps. This guy is talking about end user apps
| more.
|
| Example: I prefer to run Google Earth desktop instead of Earth
| in a browser. It's faster, has more features and doesn't suck
| up as much memory.
|
| I use Notepad++ instead of google docs for most note taking.
|
| I use Kusto Explorer desktop instead of Azure Data Explorer.
|
| Outlook desktop instead of OWA.
|
| There are exceptions. The facebook messenger app I prefer in a
| browser, because, do I trust Facebook software to _not_ scrape
| my screen and send it back to FB servers? I would much prefer
| it to live in my taskbar as a discrete app otherwise.
| asnyder wrote:
| Unfortunately as far as email is concerned this is not so true
| anymore. Many years ago I used to do as you described but
| eventually switched to hosted services due to the likelihood of
| any messages being sent from said self-hosted server being
| flagged as spam in the best case, or never received in the
| worst case as you'll receive an undeliverable message due to
| the sender requirements of many organizations.
|
| As with most nice things the bad actors (spam, phishing, etc.)
| in society will abuse things to the point that we can no longer
| have them.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Correct, the _real_ issue is - the most beneficial thing for
| users is to only share data as needed, but what scaled and was
| profitable was "leak everybody's data everywhere all the
| time."
|
| Now, the cracks are showing in this approach, mostly because of
| the ones who do it poorly. Perhaps the ones to watch out for
| though, are the ones who do it well, e.g. Google Apps?
| dingosity wrote:
| I don't need to run a server to run a local email client.
|
| I also don't have the requirement for anyone to be able to join
| a project-specific IRC channel I'm hosting. In fact, quite the
| opposite, I DON'T want just anyone to join it.
|
| For secure communication, I still use S/MIME (I may be in one
| of the last clusters of people to do so.)
|
| It's entirely possible this article was not intended for you.
| It sounds like you have different requirements than the OP.
| abruzzi wrote:
| I tried and tried to get co-workers to use S/MIME. I was
| reliably able to get one other person on board, but no one
| else wanted the go through the hassle (and its not that much
| hassle!). So the two of us eventually abandoned it.
| [deleted]
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| You don't actually need to run a server for bookmark management
| (his example).
| lucasgonze wrote:
| After hunting for a desktop and mobile Gmail replacement for a
| while, I have settled on Bluemail for both. Along the way I tried
| Mail.app, Thunderbird, and various open source thingies. None
| were close enough to the quality level of Gmail.
|
| This new situation is probably good enough to keep me off gmail
| for good.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Taking a gander through their privacy policy it doesn't seem
| like it's anymore private or secure.
| tconfrey wrote:
| I think there's going to be an increasing push for people to own
| their own data, from whatever application it is they are using.
| Tim Bernes-Lee's Solid [1] is aiming at that idea and a lot of
| the new personal knowledge management tools like LogSeq [2] and
| Obsidian [3] can work from a local file. My own browser
| bookmarking plug-in BrainTool [4] reads and writes plain text (in
| org-mode format) from a local file. BTW I'm advocating for org-
| mode as the universal exchange format for productivity apps [5].
|
| [1] https://solidproject.org/
|
| [2] https://logseq.com
|
| [3]
| https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Obsidian#How+we're+differe...
|
| [4] https://BrainTool.org
|
| [5] https://braintool.org/2022/04/29/Tools4Thought-should-use-
| Or...
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| pacarvalho wrote:
| Good point! The tricky thing is that even desktop apps today tend
| to have online backends to store data and analytics. So it would
| be a matter of building/searching for apps that are 100% local.
| samemail88 wrote:
| Thats why I decided to build my own. My bookmark manager is
| 100% local. It even caches pages I bookmark using chrome
| headless. The data is stored in a sqlite file which I can sync
| using Dropbox, Syncthing, etc if I use multiple computers.
| severak_cz wrote:
| Why not hosting it on some cheap hosting if you are already
| using PHP?
|
| (I also build an app which is basically bookmark manager and
| it's based on PHP and SQLite.)
| samemail88 wrote:
| This is on the assumption I want to host it online. I don't
| want the task to maintain a web server and pay for its
| cost. I just want to be able to it use it locally. I want
| to be able to send it to a family/friend and they can run
| it themselves.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| that would need the internet, kinda defeating the point no?
| mrleinad wrote:
| AFAIK, dropbox also needs the internet to work, doesn't
| it?
| samemail88 wrote:
| I only mentioned dropbox if I wanted to sync my database
| on multiple computers. I don't need to, so I don't need
| dropbox.
| layer8 wrote:
| But you don't need the internet to work at the same time
| as you use the local application with the data previously
| synced via Dropbox. Of course, in the case of a bookmark
| manager, the usefulness is limited when the internet
| isn't working. :)
| bmitc wrote:
| > Electron and PHPDesktop might be considered the future of
| desktop development as they allow rapid development of desktop
| like software.
|
| And unfortunately also Flutter.
|
| I am developing my own cross-platform, desktop-only GUI system.
| It is rough going for me, but the ideas in it are really not that
| hard. What surprises me is that no company has stepped up to fill
| the gap left by GTK, Qt, wxWidgets, and the OS-specific
| frameworks other than Flutter and Electron. Flutter and Electron
| can't even manage multiple windows. It's a shame. Because for a
| team of competent folks, I really don't see any massive barrier
| to creating a cross-platform, desktop-only GUI framework. And for
| some reason, academia doesn't seem to be interested at all in
| GUIs and other such things, despite there being a lot of
| interesting and difficult problems.
| warning26 wrote:
| > Because for a team of competent folks, I really don't see any
| massive barrier to creating a cross-platform, desktop-only GUI
| framework
|
| Here's one: cross-platform GUI apps will, without exception,
| feel subtly _wrong_ on every platform. Each platform has its
| own "way" of doing things.
| Macha wrote:
| Right, but the alternative is rarely a native app for each
| platform, it's Electron in most cases.
|
| I imagine you could make something that at least gives you as
| much opportunity to fit in as electron, with accessibility
| support, and some new ideas, be it from a development
| paradigm, inbuilt widget sets, or something else.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I mean, the better (for users, maybe not for developers)
| alternative is to buck up and build a native client for
| each platform. Share as much code as you can portably, but
| you'll have a small platform-specific shim around the edges
| to call into the shared business logic and implement the
| platform-specific window management and bling.
| krapp wrote:
| Electron isn't that revolutionary - it's basically just
| shipping applications in containers. It just happens that
| the container is a web browser, but it could just as well
| be the JVM or any language runtime with a GUI layer.
| krapp wrote:
| >Here's one: cross-platform GUI apps will, without exception,
| feel subtly wrong on every platform. Each platform has its
| own "way" of doing things.
|
| You're stating as an objective fact what is you own aesthetic
| opinion.
|
| Yes, different platforms are different, and the same app
| behaves differently on different platforms. But most people
| don't switch platforms or use the same app on different
| platforms routinely, and it wasn't an issue prior to
| Electron, when the most likely manifestation of this would be
| the use of the same browser on different platforms.
| karencarits wrote:
| But is subtly feeling wrong a massive barrier? And feeling
| wrong for who - I would guess that it is mostly people who
| would have done fine without a GUI that would notice, for the
| others (or us all?), most GUI apps would feel slightly off
| anyway
| jventura wrote:
| You got my curiosity. Any links to share?
| wooque wrote:
| >Flutter and Electron can't even manage multiple windows
|
| How so? I use multi window Electron apps, VS Code is one of
| them
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Do your VS Code windows interact with each other?
|
| I think parent is thinking about a behavior like the tool
| panels in Photoshop.
| sleazebreeze wrote:
| I work on an Electron app that has multiple windows
| interacting with each other in all kinds of ways. It's
| quite possible.
| karencarits wrote:
| So true. I love tools like https://tiddlywiki.com/ that *just
| works* - across platforms, can be shared without problems, and
| is flexible enough to make all sorts of simple tools without
| having to use a terminal, add n dependencies and compile
| things. Please share if you know similar software!
| 323 wrote:
| > _I really don 't see any massive barrier to creating a cross-
| platform, desktop-only GUI framework_
|
| Developer adoption is a big one. Why should I trust your NewGui
| to still be updated and improved 5 years from now?
|
| Even Microsoft has a whole graveyard of dead GUI frameworks
| (WinForms anyone?)
| siraben wrote:
| This paper, "Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of
| the Cloud"[0] is a great read on how to evaluate software for
| local-first properties and provides interesting case studies and
| ideas on how to achieve it, for instance using CRDTs instead of
| centralized storages.
|
| [0] https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/local-first.pdf
| cwales95 wrote:
| What's old is new again.
|
| I liked the article and agree with the sentiment. I myself have
| trouble trusting my data with companies nowadays. The constant
| cyber attacks, misuse of private data, and the monetisation of
| user data deeply disturbs me and makes me think a ton before
| using a new service.
|
| I'm currently building my own budgeting tool for myself and my
| partner. The pros: all the data is mine, never leaves my own
| network unless via my home VPN, and I build the features I want.
| The negatives: I have to build it myself, won't have as much
| fancy features and nice UI.
|
| This certainly won't be for everyone, and is not viable for most,
| but there's a not a lot of viable alternatives at the moment.
| butz wrote:
| Not sure if running an instance of web browser for each little
| desktop application is THE solution. I personally prefer Python
| ant TKinter. Yes, it looks ugly, but applications are small and
| use same runtime. For web developers I might even suggest trying
| GJS (GTK bindings with JS).
| samemail88 wrote:
| I understand not everybody likes PHP, some prefer python, java,
| go. PHP is my go to language for tinkering on my personal
| projects. Also, I don't need to run an instance per each little
| desktop application. I can run one instance and "host" all them
| on the same instance.
| labrador wrote:
| I prefer Blazor, which doesn't require embedding a browser.
| Running the server portion to serve my pages and json is just
| like running any other app, so I don't get the "People don't
| want to run their own server" meme. No one wants to run their
| own mail server, I get that.
| abirch wrote:
| What about paid web apps? E.g., Office 365?
| layer8 wrote:
| What about it?
| abirch wrote:
| The future of apps. The article was saying running Electron
| Apps locally for privacy, I predict those that care about
| their privacy will go for paid for web apps that protect
| their privacy.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Websites get hacked and people's data get stolen all the
| time. Also, do I really control and own the data I generate
| on these sites.
|
| Unless legislation forces application providers to be
| accountable for privacy breaches, with tough penalties, I
| don't see why privacy-sensitive users should forego
| applications that work with local files, moreso if those
| applications are free.
|
| Unrelatedly, the author explicitly states that Electron
| apps aren't real desktop apps. So he's talking about native
| apps.
| mbreese wrote:
| This pendulum will keep swinging. All of this has happened
| before and will happen again. The question that I got from
| the original article is not if there is pressure to move
| back to local applications (there is), but _if_ we 've hit
| the maxima for remote (webapp) applications. Eventually the
| remote-first momentum will wane and we will cycle back
| towards local applications, data locality, and local
| processing. We've been pushing so far with remote, web
| based applications for many years now. Email was first, but
| then came video and office applications.
|
| Mainframes -> microcomputers -> appliances (phones,
| tablets) -> whatever's next... (home servers?)
|
| At some point it will swing back. It won't look exactly the
| same, but the industry will swing back. It might not be for
| speed, but as you say, for privacy. It's easier to protect
| data that is physically close to you.
|
| We will probably also swing back from microservices with
| HTTP APIs towards monolithic applications. But that's
| another thread!
| samemail88 wrote:
| Why use Office 365 when you can use Office locally (assuming
| you need/want to use Office)?
| dingosity wrote:
| I'm happy other people are doing this. I gradually started doing
| this a couple years ago when there was one specific feature of
| Lotus Manuscript I couldn't find in google docs. In addition to
| using local apps, I'm also using more apps in the terminal. I've
| even come to terms with Lynx.
| wizofaus wrote:
| That anyone would consider Google docs et al a suitable total
| replacement for a desktop word processing app does my head in.
| They have their uses, but even as someone that doesn't need to
| write up especially complex documents I can't imagine opting
| for a web-app to craft them in. Nothing to do with data
| ownership, as I keep the documents in a hosted managed service
| (usually Onedrive these days).
| gfxgirl wrote:
| I can't imagine using a destkop app for this. Google docs is
| great! I can open the same doc on my desktop, my two laptops,
| my tablet, and my phone, and if I need to share it it's just
| a couple of clicks to share a live version. I can't imagine
| using a desktop app for this
|
| From like 1993 To 2008 i used microsoft office. Bought new
| versions often, etc... When I started using google docs I
| haven't touched office since. Zero desire to go back.
|
| There are plenty of other apps I'd consider for web only if
| good ones existed. For example I'm not a super fan of Google
| Slides, just because I find the feature set lacking. But
| seeing it and similar sites work it's clear to me someone
| could make a vector drawing app for the web that I'd be
| perfectly happy to give up Affinity Designer for.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Seems to me that 1 user can store their data in 1 or N local or
| remote silos. classically each local app had its own data store,
| so 1:N. Web apps were the same except that each of the N
| providers could monetize your data and lock you out. Google and
| FB are using SSO to abstract the N behind one front door but
| really thats just so they can monetize the data instead of the N
| vendors.
|
| Having 1:N but the user controlling where those N are stored, and
| that storage being portable between backends, seems like the
| right choice. Bonus points if apps can share data between
| themselves M:N style, although that is fearsomely hard to secure
| (exhibit A: windows registry).
|
| A localized database stored in a non proprietary single file
| format that can be moved around and rsynced, dropboxed etc at
| will, plus a common, network independent access protocol so that
| open/read/write semantics work whether the thing is local, at a
| URL, etc just work would seem to be very desirable and possible
| with todays tech.
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