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Comment by tensor | Hacker News Reader

> What if desktop computers were inherently multiplayer? What if the operating system placed people on equal footing to apps? Those were the questions we explored in building Multi, and before that, Remotion.

I presume that Multi actually did something useful, perhaps some sort of virtualization. But this description doesn't tell me anything useful about the company, nor does it even make sense. Is a desktop computer a video game? Why would it "play" let alone be multiplayer? Why would the OS be on equal footing to the apps? It doesn't make sense let alone be useful.

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Multiplayer is a SAAS term for collaborative. So in the same way google docs is collaborative, I guess the OS would be too?

Specifically real-time collaborative, like you see multiple cursors on the screen moving at once.

Looks like they will build in the automation as another player?

Our industry does itself a huge disfavour with these gimmicky terms. When you can substitute your buzzword of the day with a traditional word that everyone will instantly understand, well, this is where buzzword bingo criticisms come from. :-(

Blame sales and marketing

Buzzword bingo is where you yell "bullshit!" in the middle of the meeting once you get a winning set, right? My sister was playing that 20 years ago, and she's in car sales.

It's probably every industry that has this sort of nonsense.

I disagree.

Collaborative is a very overloaded term, it's everything from Git to Google Docs to screen sharing to multiple people accessing one app at the same time via remote access. Multiplayer is a term that usually refers to a very specific mode of collaboration, where multiple people can work on one project, on their own computers, with their own cursors, at the same time, with all changes instantly synchronized between participants.

Google Docs is both collaborative and multiplayer. Git is definitely collaborative, but not multiplayer, same goes for sending patches over mailing lists..

Realtime collaborative _thing_. It's super clear. Trying to steal a term already used to mean other things, namely playing video games with more than one person, is a terrible idea. You have words already that mean what you want, and everyone understands them.

Google docs is a realtime collaborative word processor. Git is a collaborative source control system. If you told me that Multi is a realtime collaborative editor then I'd instantly understand. But trying to say that my OS needs to be multiplayer is just confusing buzzword bingo.

Any new term can be qualified to be a buzzword just because it's... new. I don't see the argument.

It’s the best video / voice call / screen sharing / etc software out there IMO. Unfortunately Mac only so I only use to it to collaborate with coworkers.

Guess I’ll be trying Tuple.app next

"Collaboration tool that only works on Macs" seems like a pretty narrow field to target, but I guess if they were mainly looking to get acquired then it worked in the end.

Startups always have an exit strategy. Makes sense.

yeah, I've used Tuple. Multi looks to be the same thing.

I immediately understood it to mean you have Google Docs features in the entire desktop environment. Looking at the app that's what it is. So perhaps I'm in the audience and you are not.

From their homepage it seems they do screensharing + AI summary of meeting.

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