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Comment by robenkleene | Hacker News Reader

Apple is practically the most antithetical to "free software" company around, yet Apple maintains perhaps the largest fleet of local-first apps in existence, e.g., off the top of my head: Calendar, Contacts, Keynote, Mail, Notes, Numbers, Photos, and Pages (these are all examples of apps that support multi-device sync and/or real-time collaboration).

I think the truth of your statement is more that free software tends towards what you might call "offline" software (e.g., software that doesn't sync or offer real-time collaboration), because there's more friction for having a syncing backend with free software.

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Maybe the distinction is in that word "app." We started calling programs "apps" when smart phones came out. Smart phones are remote-first, and it makes sense (or it did) as long as you think of a phone as your terminal into... something.

Your examples are all programs that predate mobile, even though they are available on mobile (are they local-first on mobile too?).

Not sure I'm following, what's the importance of the term "app"?

(And yes, they're all local first on mobile as well.)

(Also Notes and Photos were mobile apps on the iPhone first [not that it really matters, just FYI].)

Apple continues to release new apps under this model today (i.e., local first), e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeform_(Apple). In my mind, the evidence just points to Apple thinking local-first is the best approach for the software on their devices.

The Windows desktop version of Microsoft's suite is probably bigger, more widely used, and just as local-first than Apple's suite, with the exception of the new version of Outlook that's still very far from replacing the traditional and local-first version. (They haven't tried to do any such replacement of the rest of their suite.)

Apple sells hardware.

(And, increasingly, entertainment and services.)

Software is a positive complement to those revenue sources.

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