Honestly I think Apple has a good model for this. The value would be in making the box plug-and-play. Apple has proven people will pay a premium for devices that Just Work. It could still be built on open software. Some kind of a cross between Apple’s opinionated approach to defaults and RedHat’s pay-for-support model of developing open source software.
The problem being solved here is data locality. This idea predates the TV show by literally decades.
Apple doesn’t want to sell us a box. They want to sell us a subscription. My assertion is that Apple’s model of selling hardware would work for home servers.
I repeat myself: focus your mind on the value, or the problem the customer is looking to solve. Data locality isn’t a problem, it’s an implementation choice or detail.
The problem is something like: “I need to keep my family photos/files safe” or “I need to store customer orders and data” or “I need a way to protect my data when I drop my phone in the toilet.”
Even giant companies with eye-watering IT budgets see the appeal of having someone else manage their physical hardware and software infrastructure.. I haven’t worked at a company that owned its own servers in nearly a decade.
Apple doesn’t want to sell us a box and coincidentally nobody wants to buy a box.
Home hosting protects from institutional threats like governments, TLAs, and LEO. Cloud providers can’t offer that. They’re a huge target and it’s an open secret they are compromised. Apple even tried to pitch that as a feature. And they’re the leaders in privacy!
It’s easy to reason about data locality. I can have a literal social network of just my actual friends and no tech company gets to spy on it.
Cloud backups are still good for disaster recovery if they are fully encrypted.
Wow! Those institutional threats sound pretty sophisticated. I’m sure the average self-hosting solution is prepared for adversaries like that, and when agents come knocking on my door I’ll just tell them “no hard drives here!”
You know, with such a scary and complex network of online adversaries and government agencies, I wonder if I could pay someone else to manage that risk for me. My business is selling online greeting cards for pets and I don’t really specialize in network security and data protection.
Okay, crazy idea. What if you didn't even need a piece of hardware and the service included online storage? It would simplify it even more for the end user so they didn't have to plug in hardware and maintain it. We could call this service something like eOnlineStorage or iBackupPhotos, maybe charge a varying price up to $9.99 a month for it.
Box would be a one-time purchase. There's no maintenance involved - if it breaks, you just buy a new one and log in, and redownload all of your data from your friends.
They used to have the AirPort which was pretty much iCloud at home. And the early iPod was intended to be a portable personal profile you could plug in to any Mac. We’re not on the best timeline.
