> 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.

> 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.

> 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).