Well, this sucks. If the idea itself wasn't dystopian enough, all of the claims are thinly-veiled bullshit.<p>> 90% Off Device Cost<p>Only if you're not counting the subscription fees. A thin client ($150 according to you, and that seems to be on the low side) and a year of the $60 plan would cost $870. You can get a lot of laptop for that money, and it would last longer than a year. And it wouldn't be tethered to the internet.<p>> Booste apps have no speed limit. The elastic cloud delivers the processing performance you need, when you need it.<p>It's still running on hardware eventually, there will inevitably be performance limits.<p>> 100x Faster Peer-to-Peer File Sharing<p>How does that help you, if it then has to get to your computer in the least efficient format possible?<p>> Code, run, test, and deploy projects without changing your desktop workflow.<p>Or.. I could just do that from my desktop, changing even less.<p>> [No] Expensive laptops<p>See above.<p>> [No] software installs<p>Read as: no flexibility.<p>> [No] updates<p>You might not be told that they're happening, but the continuous detereoration will still be there. But now you can't even do anything about it!<p>> [No] dependency conflicts<p>I'm almost surprised it doesn't claim to solve world peace.<p>> [No] virtual machines<p>Presumably it's running in one?<p>> [No] OS compatibility<p>Nonsense. You're only running Windows 10, and adding even more compatibility problems on top of that.
It's been brought to my attention that the website and HN post was misleading regarding the "from any device" claim.<p>Booste currently only runs on Windows machines, and runs Windows apps. I have updated the plans page to more clearly reflect this.<p>I am actively developing this for other device platforms, starting with Mac and Linux on the device side, and Linux environments on the cloud side.<p>I'm the sole developer of this product and wrote the first line of code only three months ago. I appreciate your patience. My intent is not to mislead - it is to paint the vision.
Hey HN!<p>First-time poster here, excited to show you what I've been working on. I'm a recent mechanical engineering grad and self-taught developer. I thought it was a pain in the ass (can we swear on HN?) to walk to a campus computer lab whenever I needed to do 3D CAD or run intensive simulations or code scripts. My less-than-powerful laptop became preventative in my work.<p>I built a simple-to-use remote desktop system, with popular engineering apps pre-installed, hosted in the cloud. Now, I'm able to run CAD (Autodesk Fusion 360) and development tools (Android Studio) from a $200 device. I think it's silly that the up-front cost of a workstation can prevent software and mechanical engineers from doing their work.<p>I threw together a free version for your feedback, and I hope to hear your opinions! I'm interviewing for YC W20, so your honest thoughts (and potential usership) would be fantastic.<p>Cheers!
Erik
Unless you have a license to provide Adobe, Autodesk, and Microsoft apps over the cloud in this way, you should take this down immediately. They have lots of lawyers.
Microsoft probably won’t notice for now but just be careful: the licensing for Windows 10 requires a very specific kind of license that’s fairly pricey per user. You can’t just use a normal end-user / student one. As a result, the economics are really tough.<p>This idea was actually the first idea for Mighty before I pivoted a few months ago.<p>macOS can only be run on Apple hardware btw. That also makes the cost structure for this kind of business complex.<p>Good luck!
A bit of advice: remote desktops suck for professional developers. A workstation is more than just the software and OS. For me it already sucks to switch from standalone screen to the laptop. You also won't be able to support all the different use cases well.<p>My advise is to focus on one particular workflow (say vscode with Js) and perfect that one.
How is this different than <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/" rel="nofollow">https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/</a>
I would love love love if this gave me a way to run Photoshop or other Win/Mac only apps from my Linux laptop. Let us request Ubuntu!<p>(Although millstone's comment makes me wary to suggest you do anything with Adobe's software...might want to be careful there)
Thanks, HN for all of the signups, critique, and feedback! This my first posting here; I learned a lot in the last day, and grew the product far more than expected.<p>I'd like to broadly respond to the many positive and negative comments made in this post.<p>Product definition:
-- Booste is currently a tool to spin up a full-fledged remote desktop. You access it via a third party RDP client. The full product vision is to make individual apps run remotely, yet seem local. Primary use cases, learned here, emphasize the need for cross-platform access and flexibility. Surprising learnings include a de-emphasis on the device cost-savings.<p>Product maturity:
-- Booste is an MVP, built entirely by me over two months. My intent of this post was not to mislead with large promises, but to assess interest in the value proposition so that I make something people want. The comments, new user signups, and feature requests have been strong validation of this. Now, there's building to be done!<p>Product distribution:
-- The initial build, launched here, had infrastructure and security components that did not scale. Following valid complaints, I've temporarily replaced the direct-download on the site with an email waitlist, so that incoming interested users can get access in the near future.<p>This was great. Cheers, all. Please contact me at erik@booste.io with any and all thoughts around this.
Love the idea. Suhail is doing something similar with Mighty (check it out if you haven't already). Not sure how you're streaming stuff like Adobe and Blender products, but I like the idea and I think this has some potential.<p>Speaking of things in the cloud, I wrote a small thread about the pros and cons if everything is in the cloud (mainly inspired by Mighty):<p><a href="https://sdan.xyz/essaycloud" rel="nofollow">https://sdan.xyz/essaycloud</a>