Because when your selling point is that its local first (or distributed, or any other politically trendy thing), you concentrate on that over the app's core value proposition. The end result is you make an app that does what people think they want at the expense of doing as good a job as possible at the thing people actually want.

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WD-42 4 days ago | parent [-]

When I switched to Immich, I thought I was going to give up a lot for the sake of self hosting. To my surprise, it’s actually better than anything I’ve used from Apple or Google. Unicorns exist, they are just rare.

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brianpan 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

The Immich "Quick Start" step 1 is mkdir and wget commands. Step 2 is "Populate the .env file with custom values"

I get it, when the prerequisites are 1) run a server and 2) have Docker installed, but this isn't inspiring confidence that local-first apps will become popular.

	▲	reilly3000 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Self-hosted services and local-first apps are distinct topics. Local-first is about keeping data on clients- orchestrated via a centralized or distributed system. Usually it means installing an app that works offline, and might sync to desktop. Self-hosting is about running servers in owned or rented infrastructure, and that is never a turnkey proposition.

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stavros 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

While Immich is fantastic enough for me to have paid the $100 just to support them, it's self-hosted, not offline-first. The two are different.