Self-host is just waiting for its iPhone moment

Did I really just waited couple of seconds on 2 different loading screens to see a small blog post that is more of an advertisement to some AI tool? Also the analogy of something that tries to stay as open as possible (self-hosting) needing its "iPhone" moment to be locked into single ecosystem doesn't really work for me.

I've been through an iPhone moment, and I moved past it once I realized that I'm getting screwed and I have no control. Now I'm back to Android (Pixel with GrapheneOS specifically) and self-hosting.

It'll never have an iPhone moment because it doesn't provide a huge leap in functionality like a cheap smartphone does. Good idea, sure, but it just doesn't provide enough of benefits for the hassle.

Probably I am wrong but to self-host I need to:

- download docker

- download docker manager (portainer? yacht?)

- configure and download images (some images require some environment variable

It's still like linux cake meme.

- For non-docker images it could require a lot more tinkering

- I am self-hosting, and I know that after setup, initial time they pay-off is so spectacular so that I will never go back

I really liked Dokploy: https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy

I partly agree. My take is: AI will lead to decentralized software (e.g., everyone can build their own to-do app or CRM). Decentralized software must be hosted. One way is to self-host the software. But as long as AI is centralized, the software will be as well.

The page won't load for me. And now I'm stuck thinking that this site can't handle the peak load from HN because it's self hosted.

I'm not sure whether that's the case, because I can't read it, but it's and interesting coincidence at least.

PocketBase, Appwrite, Supabase... It already had its iPhone moment. I don't think it will ever be as popular as the iPhone though just because AWS has a better marketing team and self-hosted solutions tend not to be very profitable.

I honestly don't think AI is the thing that is going to give self-hosting its "iPhone moment". The iPhone moment is all about UX, and putting a chatbot in front of your apache config files is still a terrible fucking experience for the average user.

If we truly want an iPhone moment for self-hosting, it's going to need an Apple-worthy investment in self-hosting UX. At minimum that's a double-clickable hosting app, with a sensible default configuration right out of the box, where you can configure everything relevant through the UI...

I don't see it happening. What's in it for the average user to self-host? Why would they put in the effort (even if it's a very small effort) if their cloud option just works for them?

Cloud platforms cost 2 to 10 times more than self-hosting. If the user scale is manageable and you can handle the complexity, self-hosting can be a valuable option.

shameless DollarDeploy plug: this is that we want to achieve. So you can self-host pretty much any open source software (self-sovereignity) and also your own apps.

and with AI, we just make it simple to do, no need to install docker, anything, it will automatically configure host.

and btw, for your own apps, we don't need docker - Linux is advanced as it is, you can just run apps locally.

next step is portability, so you can move your apps from server to server as needed.

Why should self-hosting stay locked behind geek walls? It’s just waiting for its iPhone moment.