People will run all sorts of things they don't directly interface with if the setup and functionality is low friction. People run routers for example. If you had to SSH into your router and troubleshoot it just to figure out why you're not getting connectivity people wouldn't do it. Unplug it for 5 seconds and plug it back in? Still frustrating, but the UX has low friction.
If you can buy a little square box that you plug into the wall and it Just Works™ people would do it. People used to leave their home PCs running all day to allow them to perform server type functions.
When I build a home server, I generally shoot for low maintenance, but I do the setup myself. If I can do it once, I can do it once for a million people. Sane defaults, low friction UX, just the needed functionality, everything starts on boot and resets on reboot to a working state is all it really takes.
I agree, except for the part about this being physical hardware rather than a cloud thing. I find it very difficult to imagine even 10% of America buying something like this; a likelier model is, imagine that your typical $50/mo wireless plan included a $5/mo virtual server, and an app to manage it that looks like an easier version of cpanel.
If even 10% of america bought something like this the product is a wild success, and it would be enough pressure to ensure silos are unable to totally wall themselves off. I'm sure apple would love to drop support for SMS, but they can't, because some large percentage of Americans don't use apple devices, and so those that do wouldn't tolerate being unable to message their friends without apple devices.
I know people that aren't tech savvy at all that would buy a box they just plug in, boot up, that for example synced their contacts, pictures, ran a social media server just for them (mastodon maybe) and an email server and IM server and all they had to do was run an app on their phone and enter a password. You could build something like that and offer it to people for under 100 bucks. People don't run those though, because it's not as simple as that. Most people would rather have a product than a service. But the product is less profitable than the service, so companies build services, and so people use services.
People will run all sorts of things they don't directly interface with if the setup and functionality is low friction. People run routers for example. If you had to SSH into your router and troubleshoot it just to figure out why you're not getting connectivity people wouldn't do it. Unplug it for 5 seconds and plug it back in? Still frustrating, but the UX has low friction.
If you can buy a little square box that you plug into the wall and it Just Works™ people would do it. People used to leave their home PCs running all day to allow them to perform server type functions.
When I build a home server, I generally shoot for low maintenance, but I do the setup myself. If I can do it once, I can do it once for a million people. Sane defaults, low friction UX, just the needed functionality, everything starts on boot and resets on reboot to a working state is all it really takes.