16 ms·

Show HN: Booste – a cloud-hosted desktop for developers

86 points by edunteman 7y ago

edunteman 7y ago
Hey HN! 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. 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. 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. Cheers! Erik
- devxpy 7y ago
  What tech is the remote desktop based on? VNC? Quite curious about how you keep the latency low enough that it to type in an editor.
  - greggman2 7y ago
    Windows Remote Desktop has been usable or at least not completely unacceptable in the past. VNC though I've never seen it be acceptable for CAD so I'm curious too.
    - edunteman 7y ago
      Windows Remote Desktop is the current tech in Booste, and is useable but not necessarily pleasant, I admit. Engineering priority #2, following multi-device-support, is to tackle the streaming challenge. I'm trying my best, as a solo founder, to not build out features until they're requested, so consider "Faster Streaming" to be requested!
  - emmelaich 7y ago
    Apparently Citrix according to another comment. I thought it might have been https://www.spice-space.org/ https://www.spice-space.org/ which is GPL2. Amazon workspaces seems to use RDP
    - edunteman 7y ago
      I encourage users to use their Windows RDP client for this version.
    - balakk 7y ago
      Workspaces uses PCoIP AFAIK
      - dillonmckay 7y ago
        I wish mobile OSs had an implementation of this or similar.
  - edunteman 7y ago
    I actually have not engineered the streaming portion, so latency is the same as current VNC and RDP protocols. To get the product together as fast as possible (first line of code written three months ago), I actually did not reengineer the remote desktop protocol. In fact, the current product simply gives you the IP and password info to plug into your Windows Remote Desktop client app. Future plans are to integrate RDP into the Booste app, to make the experience seem more native. After that, I'll be implementing the modern H.265 protocol used by videogame streaming companies such as Vectordash and Nvidia GeForce Now.
    - mgamache 7y ago
      h.265 will require hardware compression on the encode side (GPU) so you'll have to factor that into the cost.
      - edunteman 7y ago
        For sure! Glad to have the tech insight. I already tether a GPU to the encode side for the 3D design apps, but I'll certainly need to rebuild for scaleability in the future.
    - seabrookmx 7y ago
      > I'll be implementing the modern H.265 protocol used by videogame streaming companies Are you sure that's the right solution? Remote desktop is able to render sharp fonts because its sending a lot of desktop contextual information over the wire, as opposed to just doing a dump "capture the screen, encode it, and send" like the videogame streaming systems do. In a videogame, you can get away with small fringes on things (compression artifacts) but it would be quite jarring in your text editor. I've actually ran into this with the NX protocol (NoMachine) before, and it's one of the main reasons I went away from it.
      - GordonS 7y ago
        I agree with this, and it's exactly the reason why RDP is a vastly better experience than VNC. Using VNC on a LAN isn't great, but over WAN it's a truely miserable experience.
- panarky 7y ago
  Are you posting user credentials to a free form tool that then emails them to you in cleartext? https://imgur.com/a/dzF5Kq9 https://imgur.com/a/dzF5Kq9 https://imgur.com/a/p3umOwS https://imgur.com/a/p3umOwS
  - edunteman 7y ago
    This is admittedly correct. The tool sends (edit: sent) to an API that processes your credentials into the user database. I had not expected submissions to surge as much as they have, and had not built proper encryption into the user signup flow. I recognize the issues here and am glad you called them out. To respond: 1) I've changed the web form to gather emails as a waitlist until I properly handle new user submissions. 2) I'll develop acceptable user account creation. 3) I'll give current users the ability or change their credentials under the proper system. My truest apologies for this oversight, and thank you.
    - Mo3 7y ago
      What you've done here is absolutely fucking insane and I will never ever trust you and your project and I hope noone else does either. I'm sorry but this is utterly inacceptable. The fact that you need this to be called out is horrifying and your apology is insufficient.
- GordonS 7y ago
  You mentioned somewhere that you are using user-dedicated AWS VMs, but I don't see any mention of what size of instance you are getting? Does it vary depending on the Intermediate/Unlimited plan?
  - edunteman 7y ago
    Free plan has the same instance sizing as the other two plans. If you're technically interested, I serve up a 2xl sized instance, tethered to a medium GPU, regardless of the app used. It's costly to me, so in the future, I'll be finding ways to dynamically size vCPU and vGPU based on workload.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      > 2xl Wow, those are pretty expensive; I'd assumed it would be a medium or large instance! Hmm, not sure which series of 2xlarge instance you mean, but even with the cheapest that supports Elastic Graphics, doesn't that mean that a user on the Unlimited plan could cost you over $300/month, while you charge them $60/month? Maybe I'm calculating something wrongly here? Also, on the Intermediate plan it says "App Sessions Capped At 6 Hours" - what exactly does that mean though? Does it mean I can use it at most 6 hours in a day, or does it mean I get cut off every 6 hours but can immediately reconnect if I want to?
      - edunteman 7y ago
        Pricing: my calculations are currently at $30/month per user, at 8hr/day usage with this instance sizing. I'll double-check the sources I used to get pricing. Medium instances would be appropriate for IDE use cases. I upped to 2xl to handle 3D design tools, but with the recent interest out of the developer community, I can readjust myself downward from 2xl to medium or large. You get cut off every 6 hours (instance spins down automatically based on your plan). Immediately, you can spin it back up and reconnect for another 6 hrs. The same applies to the free tier, at a 1 hr cap.
sdan 7y ago
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. 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): https://sdan.xyz/essaycloud https://sdan.xyz/essaycloud
- edunteman 7y ago
  This is great validation, thank you :) I've caught wind of Suhail already and am actually really excited to see what he does with it. In fact, I hope to meet with him soon. If Mighty and Booste help consumers shift their hardware to the cloud, we build the market for each other. Suhail, let's meet.
- rock_artist 7y ago
  One big con for cloud and software as a service (I didn't see it mentioned in your post, maybe I've missed it) - Being a terminal machine, you don't own or hold anything. The Adobe Venezuela case is a good example for that. So if booste.io needs to comply to some regulation it might break those users ability to access their data. It is a growing concern as the terminal/main-frame days are getting back at us.
  - sdan 7y ago
    This too. Overtime I think more and more games/services may adapt to this "everything in the cloud" idea and eventually support it w/ their own licenses and whatnot. Other than that, I've said how the cloud is like a terminal machine (as you've said). Once it's gone, you're left with on-device things to do now... which is a huge con, but there are some pros as I've described in the post. But given the number of pros and cons for both cloud and on-device, it's a hard decision/strategy to make up on what a company is going to do.
millstone 7y ago
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.
- edunteman 7y ago
  Thanks for the warning! All apps currently offered are free licenses, with the exception of the Adobe suite and Autodesk Fusion. For those, you follow a workflow as if you were doing it on your own device. For Adobe, you're prompted to enter your personal license info (Bring Your Own License). Adobe limits your usage to a certain quantity of devices per license, and it recognizes the app in the Booste cloud as a uniqe device, prompting you to log out of your other devices if you've reached capacity. For Autodesk, I actually just provide the download link for the software, leading you through the process to properly do the download and license compliance yourself as if you were a traditional desktop user. I understand that this answer may not be enough, and will be diving deeper into the implications. Thank you.
wayoutthere 7y ago
Wasn't this called Citrix back in the 90s?
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Citrix wasn't the only virtual desktop solution, and there are even more now; Azure and AWS each have them in their portfolio of cloud services, for instance.
- edunteman 7y ago
  Exactly. The tech is nothing new. I'm moreso consumerizing the Citrix tech, which has historically been enterprise-focused. It's an amazing tech and just needs to be packaged up in a non-intimidating, non-intrusive way for laymen to use.
TravisLS 7y ago
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! (Although millstone's comment makes me wary to suggest you do anything with Adobe's software...might want to be careful there)
- edunteman 7y ago
  Millstone made an excellent point. I'm currently doing a Bring Your Own License model, which complies with your current Adobe license. Email me at erik@booste.io - I can have an Ubuntu version packaged up for you within a week.
mikenew 7y ago
If you can give me a way to do iOS development remotely without needing a mac I'll throw money at you.
- shantly 7y ago
  There's a bunch of stuff like this: https://www.macincloud.com https://www.macincloud.com Does that not do what you need?
  - GordonS 7y ago
    I used a MacInCloud server as a build server for iOS apps for something like 3 years, and it was a good experience. The server was performant and totally stable, and the one time I contacted support about a billing issue, it was resolved quickly and professionally. Recommended. Only reason I don't use it anymore is that Azure DevOps now offers MacOS build agents.
- edunteman 7y ago
  This is a harder one because of Apple's death grip on their OS and ecosystem. I'm wary to get too deep into it because multiple illegal cloud emulators have been taken down and sued. I'd need to work out a licensing agreement with them first. Very encouraging and validating to have your interest in the cross-platform aspect of this though! I'll dive in.
phonon 7y ago
How is this different than https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/ https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/
- jnwatson 7y ago
  Perhaps app license management?
  - edunteman 7y ago
    It's a direction I've considered (bundling and distributing licenses in a compliant way), but for the next year I'd rather build out the tech and UX, with a simple "Bring Your Own License" approach.
- edunteman 7y ago
  Great question! Workspaces is my most direct competitor, and the current product is exactly that - a cloud based desktop. Booste is aiming to be more layman-friendly, whereas workspaces is more IT-admin focused, from my experience. The vision of the next build is to launch and display apps as if they were local. IE: you click the app icon and a window opens up, without you even needing to context switch into a remote system.
- GordonS 7y ago
  Microsoft very recently GA'd their Windows Virtual Desktop offering too: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/virtual-desktop/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/virtual-desktop/ I imagine it will be tough to compete with AWS and Microsoft - I wonder if there is a niche you can specialise in?
personjerry 7y ago
How can it be practical to code on my phone without a real keyboard?
- edunteman 7y ago
  Some engineers have told me they'd like to change code on the fly (emergency situations). This product definitely leans toward small laptop and tablet use cases, but if the push for phone support arises, I'll build out what I can!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
sturza 7y ago
I hoped i could run this in a browser
- edunteman 7y ago
  It's a consideration. Certainly more portable. Thanks for letting me know it's of interest!
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    Just as a possibly-useful reference: https://guacamole.apache.org/ https://guacamole.apache.org/
edunteman 7y ago
It's been brought to my attention that the website and HN post was misleading regarding the "from any device" claim. Booste currently only runs on Windows machines, and runs Windows apps. I have updated the plans page to more clearly reflect this. 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. 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.
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, we've changed the title from "Run heavy desktop apps from any device" to what it says on the page.
  - edunteman 7y ago
    Very helpful, thanks!
- bluerobotcat 7y ago
  Running a development environment from an iPad would really catch my interest. It's something I've already done in the past using Emacs over Blink (a Mosh terminal for iOS), but the experience was not ideal. I'd need to be able to open multiple terminals and install semi-random programs though. It's not clear to me if that's fits in with your vision.
  - faizshah 7y ago
    I have been running Cloud Shell on the google cloud console app on iOS. Only your home folder persists but you can set up a custom cloud shell environment with docker to add your favorite tools. Its pretty good for coding on the go (with vim) but for multiple terminals you might be better off using screen or tmux. I can even deploy on the command line because of gcloud and gsutil cli toolchains.
  - edunteman 7y ago
    I'm certainly flexible to work with the use cases I see. Your Emacs workflow is one I'd happily replace with a proper GUI (VSCode, etc). The current iteration is quite literally a full remote desktop, onto which you can install any semi-random program you'd like. In fact, there's even a "Barebones Windows" desktop available, with no installs, for you to flesh out as you please. Multiple terminals are totally cool too! That said, the long-term vision is to make the apps you use seem local, so there's no context-switching. I'd like Booste to just be a wrapper around the app - if I could eliminate the desktop on the server end and simply capture the application window, that'd be the most seamless experience for users who are not used to context-switching into remote desktops.
suhail 7y ago
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. This idea was actually the first idea for Mighty before I pivoted a few months ago. macOS can only be run on Apple hardware btw. That also makes the cost structure for this kind of business complex. Good luck!
- edunteman 7y ago
  Suhail, this is excellent insight. Saving me some hard lessons. Currently using Windows 10 Servers on user-dedicated EC2 instances, so costs are bundled in, but once I get into a multi-tenant setup and cost optimization I'll see what I can work out with Microsoft. Serverside MacOS is a nut I'm not trying to crack at the moment. Too many lawsuits of people trying to monetize Apple products. Lastly: Mighty is an excellent move. The macro shift toward cloud-native makes browser-based tools more pervasive. You're well-positioned with Chrome, mate.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Currently using Windows 10 Servers on user-dedicated EC2 instances, so costs are bundled in, but once I get into a multi-tenant setup and cost optimization I'll see what I can work out with Microsoft. Good luck, but note that you are competing with Microsoft (who offers Azure Virtual Desktops), so they aren't likely to want to work out a favorable (for you) deal.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    > user-dedicated EC2 instances Ouch, that sounds expensive! I would imagine the economics of this will be a tough sell compared to one's own laptop or desktop?
woah 7y ago
Why not offer 2 minute trial sessions? I don't feel like signing up just to try this.
- edunteman 7y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion, and especially for the insight that the signup is a sticking point. It'd take some rearchitecting to offer trial sessions in that way, but if this project gains momentum, we'll find a way to offer trials without signup, to reduce friction.
mkoryak 7y ago
Serious question: Does your website say that "Booste runs your slow as fuck apps for you." ??
- edunteman 7y ago
  Yes. You did not misread - "Slow AF Apps" - it was an intent to capture user pains and seem human. Judging by your response, it was not in good taste. Curious to anyone else reading this: is a statement like that offputting?
  - Archit3ch 7y ago
    It's certainly unprofessional.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    It's not so much off-putting as it is unprofessional. I don't mind "bad words" in conversations with people I know, but I can't recall a single instance of their use in a software sales pitch (which is what your landing page should be). It implies familiarity where there is none: I simply don't know you. This is not the place to use Reddit slang.
    - edunteman 7y ago
      > "I simply don't know you" Excellent way to frame the issue here. I've removed AF from the website copy.
  - danpalmer 7y ago
    This comment made me change my mind from: "this is an early stage product I might consider using", to... "this is a weekend hobby project hacked together that I should definitely not pay for or depend on for anything business related". Some companies can pull off the very human feel, but it takes a lot of effort to do well without trashing a brand.
    - edunteman 7y ago
choeger 7y ago
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. My advise is to focus on one particular workflow (say vscode with Js) and perfect that one.
- GordonS 7y ago
  While I agree that finding a niche seems like a good plan, I'm not sure that VSCode and JS is the one - node/JS cloud IDEs have already been a thing for some time now.
- edunteman 7y ago
  Thanks for the critical yet constructive feedback! The product currently available is a full-fledged remote desktop, forcing you to switch back and forth, which can certainly be sucky. The plan is to make the remote-hosted apps pop up as a window on your local machine, as if it were running locally, when really it's hosted and ran on a cloud VM. I want the apps (VSCode, for example) to seem completely local. Would this better accommodate your personal workflow?
Nullabillity 7y ago
Well, this sucks. If the idea itself wasn't dystopian enough, all of the claims are thinly-veiled bullshit. > 90% Off Device Cost 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 $870. You can get a lot of laptop for that money, and it would last longer than a year. And it wouldn't be tethered to the internet. > Booste apps have no speed limit. The elastic cloud delivers the processing performance you need, when you need it. It's still running on hardware eventually, there will inevitably be performance limits. > 100x Faster Peer-to-Peer File Sharing How does that help you, if it then has to get to your computer in the least efficient format possible? > Code, run, test, and deploy projects without changing your desktop workflow. Or.. I could just do that from my desktop, changing even less. > [No] Expensive laptops See above. > [No] software installs Read as: no flexibility. > [No] updates You might not be told that they're happening, but the continuous detereoration will still be there. But now you can't even do anything about it! > [No] dependency conflicts I'm almost surprised it doesn't claim to solve world peace. > [No] virtual machines Presumably it's running in one? > [No] OS compatibility Nonsense. You're only running Windows 10, and adding even more compatibility problems on top of that.
- VvR-Ox 7y ago
  - I agree, it sucks - A friend just had to use similar BS when he started at another company and I am already excited about all the funny stories he'll tell me - We can already minimize resource consumption by using apps and OSes which are more efficient. While Win10 is total crap for example, a laptop from 2005 still works as a decent Dev-machine with Linux on it (it basically costs <200$ and you can upgrade it to some degree) When I read about these ideas I imagine people sitting in front of their 2000$ Apple-MBP's just to connect to some AWS-shit that costs even more just "to be able to work" - it's kind of funny but also stupid.
- mkoryak 7y ago
  You're being too harsh. Yes his price is probably a bit high for the average user, but it is probably this way either because he's passing on his small scale cost or he made up some numbers. I use Google's web based IDE to write code (at work), and it is a game changer. I can pick up where I left off from any device (that's not a phone). I used to be a die hard intellij fan, but now I never use it. Why? Because it's not in the cloud.
tomstoms 7y ago
I would not trust a product from someone who doesn’t know how to put ssl in front of a website.
- edunteman 7y ago
  Noted!
kevsim 7y ago
Is VS Code really a “slow AF” app for people? I have my gripes, but I generally find it relatively snappy.
- edunteman 7y ago
  Testing out the markets :) I actually never expected to support VS Code or any dev tools at all! Launched on Product Hunt a month ago targeting 3D design and animation markets. Yet strangely, 25% of my inbounds were directly requesting VS Code, so apparently there's a need.
edunteman 7y ago
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. I'd like to broadly respond to the many positive and negative comments made in this post. 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. 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! 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. This was great. Cheers, all. Please contact me at erik@booste.io with any and all thoughts around this.
sequoiar6868 7y ago
good idea. I have built a desktop cloud before.

86 points by edunteman 7y ago

Hey HN! 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. 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. 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. Cheers! Erik

devxpy 7y ago
What tech is the remote desktop based on? VNC? Quite curious about how you keep the latency low enough that it to type in an editor.
- greggman2 7y ago
  Windows Remote Desktop has been usable or at least not completely unacceptable in the past. VNC though I've never seen it be acceptable for CAD so I'm curious too.
  - edunteman 7y ago
    Windows Remote Desktop is the current tech in Booste, and is useable but not necessarily pleasant, I admit. Engineering priority #2, following multi-device-support, is to tackle the streaming challenge. I'm trying my best, as a solo founder, to not build out features until they're requested, so consider "Faster Streaming" to be requested!
- emmelaich 7y ago
  Apparently Citrix according to another comment. I thought it might have been https://www.spice-space.org/ https://www.spice-space.org/ which is GPL2. Amazon workspaces seems to use RDP
  - edunteman 7y ago
    I encourage users to use their Windows RDP client for this version.
  - balakk 7y ago
    Workspaces uses PCoIP AFAIK
    - dillonmckay 7y ago
      I wish mobile OSs had an implementation of this or similar.
- edunteman 7y ago
  I actually have not engineered the streaming portion, so latency is the same as current VNC and RDP protocols. To get the product together as fast as possible (first line of code written three months ago), I actually did not reengineer the remote desktop protocol. In fact, the current product simply gives you the IP and password info to plug into your Windows Remote Desktop client app. Future plans are to integrate RDP into the Booste app, to make the experience seem more native. After that, I'll be implementing the modern H.265 protocol used by videogame streaming companies such as Vectordash and Nvidia GeForce Now.
  - mgamache 7y ago
    h.265 will require hardware compression on the encode side (GPU) so you'll have to factor that into the cost.
    - edunteman 7y ago
      For sure! Glad to have the tech insight. I already tether a GPU to the encode side for the 3D design apps, but I'll certainly need to rebuild for scaleability in the future.
  - seabrookmx 7y ago
    > I'll be implementing the modern H.265 protocol used by videogame streaming companies Are you sure that's the right solution? Remote desktop is able to render sharp fonts because its sending a lot of desktop contextual information over the wire, as opposed to just doing a dump "capture the screen, encode it, and send" like the videogame streaming systems do. In a videogame, you can get away with small fringes on things (compression artifacts) but it would be quite jarring in your text editor. I've actually ran into this with the NX protocol (NoMachine) before, and it's one of the main reasons I went away from it.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      I agree with this, and it's exactly the reason why RDP is a vastly better experience than VNC. Using VNC on a LAN isn't great, but over WAN it's a truely miserable experience.
panarky 7y ago
Are you posting user credentials to a free form tool that then emails them to you in cleartext? https://imgur.com/a/dzF5Kq9 https://imgur.com/a/dzF5Kq9 https://imgur.com/a/p3umOwS https://imgur.com/a/p3umOwS
- edunteman 7y ago
  This is admittedly correct. The tool sends (edit: sent) to an API that processes your credentials into the user database. I had not expected submissions to surge as much as they have, and had not built proper encryption into the user signup flow. I recognize the issues here and am glad you called them out. To respond: 1) I've changed the web form to gather emails as a waitlist until I properly handle new user submissions. 2) I'll develop acceptable user account creation. 3) I'll give current users the ability or change their credentials under the proper system. My truest apologies for this oversight, and thank you.
  - Mo3 7y ago
    What you've done here is absolutely fucking insane and I will never ever trust you and your project and I hope noone else does either. I'm sorry but this is utterly inacceptable. The fact that you need this to be called out is horrifying and your apology is insufficient.
GordonS 7y ago
You mentioned somewhere that you are using user-dedicated AWS VMs, but I don't see any mention of what size of instance you are getting? Does it vary depending on the Intermediate/Unlimited plan?
- edunteman 7y ago
  Free plan has the same instance sizing as the other two plans. If you're technically interested, I serve up a 2xl sized instance, tethered to a medium GPU, regardless of the app used. It's costly to me, so in the future, I'll be finding ways to dynamically size vCPU and vGPU based on workload.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    > 2xl Wow, those are pretty expensive; I'd assumed it would be a medium or large instance! Hmm, not sure which series of 2xlarge instance you mean, but even with the cheapest that supports Elastic Graphics, doesn't that mean that a user on the Unlimited plan could cost you over $300/month, while you charge them $60/month? Maybe I'm calculating something wrongly here? Also, on the Intermediate plan it says "App Sessions Capped At 6 Hours" - what exactly does that mean though? Does it mean I can use it at most 6 hours in a day, or does it mean I get cut off every 6 hours but can immediately reconnect if I want to?
    - edunteman 7y ago
      Pricing: my calculations are currently at $30/month per user, at 8hr/day usage with this instance sizing. I'll double-check the sources I used to get pricing. Medium instances would be appropriate for IDE use cases. I upped to 2xl to handle 3D design tools, but with the recent interest out of the developer community, I can readjust myself downward from 2xl to medium or large. You get cut off every 6 hours (instance spins down automatically based on your plan). Immediately, you can spin it back up and reconnect for another 6 hrs. The same applies to the free tier, at a 1 hr cap.

sdan 7y ago

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. 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): https://sdan.xyz/essaycloud https://sdan.xyz/essaycloud

edunteman 7y ago
This is great validation, thank you :) I've caught wind of Suhail already and am actually really excited to see what he does with it. In fact, I hope to meet with him soon. If Mighty and Booste help consumers shift their hardware to the cloud, we build the market for each other. Suhail, let's meet.
rock_artist 7y ago
One big con for cloud and software as a service (I didn't see it mentioned in your post, maybe I've missed it) - Being a terminal machine, you don't own or hold anything. The Adobe Venezuela case is a good example for that. So if booste.io needs to comply to some regulation it might break those users ability to access their data. It is a growing concern as the terminal/main-frame days are getting back at us.
- sdan 7y ago
  This too. Overtime I think more and more games/services may adapt to this "everything in the cloud" idea and eventually support it w/ their own licenses and whatnot. Other than that, I've said how the cloud is like a terminal machine (as you've said). Once it's gone, you're left with on-device things to do now... which is a huge con, but there are some pros as I've described in the post. But given the number of pros and cons for both cloud and on-device, it's a hard decision/strategy to make up on what a company is going to do.

millstone 7y ago

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.

edunteman 7y ago
Thanks for the warning! All apps currently offered are free licenses, with the exception of the Adobe suite and Autodesk Fusion. For those, you follow a workflow as if you were doing it on your own device. For Adobe, you're prompted to enter your personal license info (Bring Your Own License). Adobe limits your usage to a certain quantity of devices per license, and it recognizes the app in the Booste cloud as a uniqe device, prompting you to log out of your other devices if you've reached capacity. For Autodesk, I actually just provide the download link for the software, leading you through the process to properly do the download and license compliance yourself as if you were a traditional desktop user. I understand that this answer may not be enough, and will be diving deeper into the implications. Thank you.

wayoutthere 7y ago

Wasn't this called Citrix back in the 90s?

dragonwriter 7y ago
Citrix wasn't the only virtual desktop solution, and there are even more now; Azure and AWS each have them in their portfolio of cloud services, for instance.
edunteman 7y ago
Exactly. The tech is nothing new. I'm moreso consumerizing the Citrix tech, which has historically been enterprise-focused. It's an amazing tech and just needs to be packaged up in a non-intimidating, non-intrusive way for laymen to use.

TravisLS 7y ago

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! (Although millstone's comment makes me wary to suggest you do anything with Adobe's software...might want to be careful there)

edunteman 7y ago
Millstone made an excellent point. I'm currently doing a Bring Your Own License model, which complies with your current Adobe license. Email me at erik@booste.io - I can have an Ubuntu version packaged up for you within a week.

mikenew 7y ago

If you can give me a way to do iOS development remotely without needing a mac I'll throw money at you.

shantly 7y ago
There's a bunch of stuff like this: https://www.macincloud.com https://www.macincloud.com Does that not do what you need?
- GordonS 7y ago
  I used a MacInCloud server as a build server for iOS apps for something like 3 years, and it was a good experience. The server was performant and totally stable, and the one time I contacted support about a billing issue, it was resolved quickly and professionally. Recommended. Only reason I don't use it anymore is that Azure DevOps now offers MacOS build agents.
edunteman 7y ago
This is a harder one because of Apple's death grip on their OS and ecosystem. I'm wary to get too deep into it because multiple illegal cloud emulators have been taken down and sued. I'd need to work out a licensing agreement with them first. Very encouraging and validating to have your interest in the cross-platform aspect of this though! I'll dive in.

phonon 7y ago

How is this different than https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/ https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/

jnwatson 7y ago
Perhaps app license management?
- edunteman 7y ago
  It's a direction I've considered (bundling and distributing licenses in a compliant way), but for the next year I'd rather build out the tech and UX, with a simple "Bring Your Own License" approach.
edunteman 7y ago
Great question! Workspaces is my most direct competitor, and the current product is exactly that - a cloud based desktop. Booste is aiming to be more layman-friendly, whereas workspaces is more IT-admin focused, from my experience. The vision of the next build is to launch and display apps as if they were local. IE: you click the app icon and a window opens up, without you even needing to context switch into a remote system.
GordonS 7y ago
Microsoft very recently GA'd their Windows Virtual Desktop offering too: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/virtual-desktop/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/virtual-desktop/ I imagine it will be tough to compete with AWS and Microsoft - I wonder if there is a niche you can specialise in?

personjerry 7y ago

How can it be practical to code on my phone without a real keyboard?

edunteman 7y ago
Some engineers have told me they'd like to change code on the fly (emergency situations). This product definitely leans toward small laptop and tablet use cases, but if the push for phone support arises, I'll build out what I can!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

sturza 7y ago

I hoped i could run this in a browser

edunteman 7y ago
It's a consideration. Certainly more portable. Thanks for letting me know it's of interest!
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Just as a possibly-useful reference: https://guacamole.apache.org/ https://guacamole.apache.org/

edunteman 7y ago

It's been brought to my attention that the website and HN post was misleading regarding the "from any device" claim. Booste currently only runs on Windows machines, and runs Windows apps. I have updated the plans page to more clearly reflect this. 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. 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.

dang 7y ago
Ok, we've changed the title from "Run heavy desktop apps from any device" to what it says on the page.
- edunteman 7y ago
  Very helpful, thanks!
bluerobotcat 7y ago
Running a development environment from an iPad would really catch my interest. It's something I've already done in the past using Emacs over Blink (a Mosh terminal for iOS), but the experience was not ideal. I'd need to be able to open multiple terminals and install semi-random programs though. It's not clear to me if that's fits in with your vision.
- faizshah 7y ago
  I have been running Cloud Shell on the google cloud console app on iOS. Only your home folder persists but you can set up a custom cloud shell environment with docker to add your favorite tools. Its pretty good for coding on the go (with vim) but for multiple terminals you might be better off using screen or tmux. I can even deploy on the command line because of gcloud and gsutil cli toolchains.
- edunteman 7y ago
  I'm certainly flexible to work with the use cases I see. Your Emacs workflow is one I'd happily replace with a proper GUI (VSCode, etc). The current iteration is quite literally a full remote desktop, onto which you can install any semi-random program you'd like. In fact, there's even a "Barebones Windows" desktop available, with no installs, for you to flesh out as you please. Multiple terminals are totally cool too! That said, the long-term vision is to make the apps you use seem local, so there's no context-switching. I'd like Booste to just be a wrapper around the app - if I could eliminate the desktop on the server end and simply capture the application window, that'd be the most seamless experience for users who are not used to context-switching into remote desktops.

suhail 7y ago

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. This idea was actually the first idea for Mighty before I pivoted a few months ago. macOS can only be run on Apple hardware btw. That also makes the cost structure for this kind of business complex. Good luck!

edunteman 7y ago
Suhail, this is excellent insight. Saving me some hard lessons. Currently using Windows 10 Servers on user-dedicated EC2 instances, so costs are bundled in, but once I get into a multi-tenant setup and cost optimization I'll see what I can work out with Microsoft. Serverside MacOS is a nut I'm not trying to crack at the moment. Too many lawsuits of people trying to monetize Apple products. Lastly: Mighty is an excellent move. The macro shift toward cloud-native makes browser-based tools more pervasive. You're well-positioned with Chrome, mate.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Currently using Windows 10 Servers on user-dedicated EC2 instances, so costs are bundled in, but once I get into a multi-tenant setup and cost optimization I'll see what I can work out with Microsoft. Good luck, but note that you are competing with Microsoft (who offers Azure Virtual Desktops), so they aren't likely to want to work out a favorable (for you) deal.
- GordonS 7y ago
  > user-dedicated EC2 instances Ouch, that sounds expensive! I would imagine the economics of this will be a tough sell compared to one's own laptop or desktop?

woah 7y ago

Why not offer 2 minute trial sessions? I don't feel like signing up just to try this.

edunteman 7y ago
Thanks for the suggestion, and especially for the insight that the signup is a sticking point. It'd take some rearchitecting to offer trial sessions in that way, but if this project gains momentum, we'll find a way to offer trials without signup, to reduce friction.

mkoryak 7y ago

Serious question: Does your website say that "Booste runs your slow as fuck apps for you." ??

edunteman 7y ago
Yes. You did not misread - "Slow AF Apps" - it was an intent to capture user pains and seem human. Judging by your response, it was not in good taste. Curious to anyone else reading this: is a statement like that offputting?
- Archit3ch 7y ago
  It's certainly unprofessional.
- m0zg 7y ago
  It's not so much off-putting as it is unprofessional. I don't mind "bad words" in conversations with people I know, but I can't recall a single instance of their use in a software sales pitch (which is what your landing page should be). It implies familiarity where there is none: I simply don't know you. This is not the place to use Reddit slang.
  - edunteman 7y ago
    > "I simply don't know you" Excellent way to frame the issue here. I've removed AF from the website copy.
- danpalmer 7y ago
  This comment made me change my mind from: "this is an early stage product I might consider using", to... "this is a weekend hobby project hacked together that I should definitely not pay for or depend on for anything business related". Some companies can pull off the very human feel, but it takes a lot of effort to do well without trashing a brand.
  - edunteman 7y ago

choeger 7y ago

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. My advise is to focus on one particular workflow (say vscode with Js) and perfect that one.

GordonS 7y ago
While I agree that finding a niche seems like a good plan, I'm not sure that VSCode and JS is the one - node/JS cloud IDEs have already been a thing for some time now.
edunteman 7y ago
Thanks for the critical yet constructive feedback! The product currently available is a full-fledged remote desktop, forcing you to switch back and forth, which can certainly be sucky. The plan is to make the remote-hosted apps pop up as a window on your local machine, as if it were running locally, when really it's hosted and ran on a cloud VM. I want the apps (VSCode, for example) to seem completely local. Would this better accommodate your personal workflow?

Nullabillity 7y ago

Well, this sucks. If the idea itself wasn't dystopian enough, all of the claims are thinly-veiled bullshit. > 90% Off Device Cost 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. > Booste apps have no speed limit. The elastic cloud delivers the processing performance you need, when you need it. It's still running on hardware eventually, there will inevitably be performance limits. > 100x Faster Peer-to-Peer File Sharing How does that help you, if it then has to get to your computer in the least efficient format possible? > Code, run, test, and deploy projects without changing your desktop workflow. Or.. I could just do that from my desktop, changing even less. > [No] Expensive laptops See above. > [No] software installs Read as: no flexibility. > [No] updates 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! > [No] dependency conflicts I'm almost surprised it doesn't claim to solve world peace. > [No] virtual machines Presumably it's running in one? > [No] OS compatibility Nonsense. You're only running Windows 10, and adding even more compatibility problems on top of that.

VvR-Ox 7y ago
- I agree, it sucks - A friend just had to use similar BS when he started at another company and I am already excited about all the funny stories he'll tell me - We can already minimize resource consumption by using apps and OSes which are more efficient. While Win10 is total crap for example, a laptop from 2005 still works as a decent Dev-machine with Linux on it (it basically costs <200$ and you can upgrade it to some degree) When I read about these ideas I imagine people sitting in front of their 2000$ Apple-MBP's just to connect to some AWS-shit that costs even more just "to be able to work" - it's kind of funny but also stupid.
mkoryak 7y ago
You're being too harsh. Yes his price is probably a bit high for the average user, but it is probably this way either because he's passing on his small scale cost or he made up some numbers. I use Google's web based IDE to write code (at work), and it is a game changer. I can pick up where I left off from any device (that's not a phone). I used to be a die hard intellij fan, but now I never use it. Why? Because it's not in the cloud.

tomstoms 7y ago

I would not trust a product from someone who doesn’t know how to put ssl in front of a website.

edunteman 7y ago
Noted!

kevsim 7y ago

Is VS Code really a “slow AF” app for people? I have my gripes, but I generally find it relatively snappy.

edunteman 7y ago
Testing out the markets :) I actually never expected to support VS Code or any dev tools at all! Launched on Product Hunt a month ago targeting 3D design and animation markets. Yet strangely, 25% of my inbounds were directly requesting VS Code, so apparently there's a need.

edunteman 7y ago

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. I'd like to broadly respond to the many positive and negative comments made in this post. 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. 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! 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. This was great. Cheers, all. Please contact me at erik@booste.io with any and all thoughts around this.

sequoiar6868 7y ago

good idea. I have built a desktop cloud before.