6 ms·

My hang up with Mighty isn’t about their idea or their technology or their execution. It’s impressive to see what they’ve done. My issue is that it’s not a pro

My hang up with Mighty isn’t about their idea or their technology or their execution. It’s impressive to see what they’ve done. My issue is that it’s not a product I could feel good recommending to anyone, at least at the high pricing that was proposed in the last discussion. In an era of $999 M1 Macs (and even cheaper AMD laptops) and readily available financing options, it doesn’t make sense for anyone to throw their money away at a SaaS service that simply cannot perform as well as local Chrome on a modern machine. I could see the narrow use case for limited situations where someone has 1. Weird IT department restrictions that require them to use old, slow computers but also 2. Budget rules that allow them to spend monthly money on a SaaS but not on financing the hardware they need to get their job done and 3. Guaranteed high speed internet all of the time and 4. An IT/corporate security department that is okay with them sending all of their keystrokes, login info, and browser data to a 3rd party service Surely this situation exists, but it still feels like Mighty is targeting a broader audience by providing untrue claims about remote thin client technology somehow being faster than a halfway decent local machine. I’d feel equally uncomfortable if Stadia was charging $50/month while claiming to be lower latency than local gaming. The counter arguments about disrespecting hard working startup founders or doubting visionaries feel like a strawman response to legitimate questions about the value of their service. The technology and execution look to be good, AFAICT. It’s the product, pricing, messaging, and value that I can’t recommend.

pantulis 6y ago
I was going to try Mighty but even in my somewhat relaxed work environment item 4 is not really solved by Mighty apart from "we will not access your data". Obviously they are very smart and will surely be working on E2E encryption but they do not seem to have it.
- IAmLiterallyAB 6y ago
  > E2E encryption How on earth would that work for their product? They need to access the data so they can render it.
  - nomel 6y ago
    Surely that could happen client side.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      The whole value proposition is that the beefy remote machine is handling the rendering, isn't it? At least half the performance of a web page is wasted on DOM re-shuffling. Not to mention, it's not like Chrome can run Javascript without looking at the data, and if they're not running Chrome, they'll start getting into compatibility issues.
      - sjg007 6y ago
        It's endpoint security as well. All browsing goes through Mighty.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        If Mighty behaves like a full replacement for a modern web browser on my system, it will have to give the web pages I visit (opt-in) access to my GPS, camera, microphone, Bluetooth, battery information, and other peripherals, I sliding all of my mouse and keyboard input. It will have to allow me to upload or download files from the web page. Also, all my tabs are running on the same remote VM, so this only protects other systems, not my banking or JIRA. Sure, it's the ultimate sandbox for the code itself, it probably protects me perfectly from Meltdown attacks against other programs on my main system, but I don't think that's enough to call it 'endpoint security'.
  - pantulis 6y ago
    I don't have the faintest idea, but the notion of having my session cookies and credentials stored in a VM somewhere makes me very nervous and I am not even half paranoid. So they need to figure it out otherwise it's only valid for personal use, which is not exactly the money is, imho. Maybe some self hosted solution for corporate departments? Or waiting for an acquision from Citrix or VMWare...
andy_ppp 6y ago
No but it makes a lot of sense for Mighty App to be the middleman between your computer and the Internet. If I was them I’d just give it away for free and sell your data to Facebook (anonymously of course!)...
mchusma 6y ago
I agree with your stance. I was confused to come here and read that people thought he was referring to Mighty. I think Mighty is a pretty small, easily proven/disproven, not-crazy idea, not-that-new idea, with niche applications. To me that is a bit different than how this article reads. I think the debate is market size. The only real debate I hear with Mighty is whether it is good for <10M people worldwide or >1B people worldwide.
DharmaPolice 6y ago
>4. An IT/corporate security department that is okay with them sending all of their keystrokes, login info, and browser data to a 3rd party service Or just an IT/security department that is blissfully unaware of the shenanigans that some of its users are up to. Especially if people are accessing this from outside of the corporate network to start with.
twobitshifter 6y ago
RE: 4. My company uses webmarshal which fronts requests and blocks pages deemed not good for productivity/data security. In that type of situation you already have an intermediary so mighty could make sense - make everyone use mighty and give it a custom blocklist. Obviously not a situation that employees would be a fan of, but it’s something that corporate is already doing, and mighty could improve the experience.

pantulis 6y ago

I was going to try Mighty but even in my somewhat relaxed work environment item 4 is not really solved by Mighty apart from "we will not access your data". Obviously they are very smart and will surely be working on E2E encryption but they do not seem to have it.

IAmLiterallyAB 6y ago
> E2E encryption How on earth would that work for their product? They need to access the data so they can render it.
- nomel 6y ago
  Surely that could happen client side.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    The whole value proposition is that the beefy remote machine is handling the rendering, isn't it? At least half the performance of a web page is wasted on DOM re-shuffling. Not to mention, it's not like Chrome can run Javascript without looking at the data, and if they're not running Chrome, they'll start getting into compatibility issues.
    - sjg007 6y ago
      It's endpoint security as well. All browsing goes through Mighty.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        If Mighty behaves like a full replacement for a modern web browser on my system, it will have to give the web pages I visit (opt-in) access to my GPS, camera, microphone, Bluetooth, battery information, and other peripherals, I sliding all of my mouse and keyboard input. It will have to allow me to upload or download files from the web page. Also, all my tabs are running on the same remote VM, so this only protects other systems, not my banking or JIRA. Sure, it's the ultimate sandbox for the code itself, it probably protects me perfectly from Meltdown attacks against other programs on my main system, but I don't think that's enough to call it 'endpoint security'.
- pantulis 6y ago
  I don't have the faintest idea, but the notion of having my session cookies and credentials stored in a VM somewhere makes me very nervous and I am not even half paranoid. So they need to figure it out otherwise it's only valid for personal use, which is not exactly the money is, imho. Maybe some self hosted solution for corporate departments? Or waiting for an acquision from Citrix or VMWare...

andy_ppp 6y ago

No but it makes a lot of sense for Mighty App to be the middleman between your computer and the Internet. If I was them I’d just give it away for free and sell your data to Facebook (anonymously of course!)...

mchusma 6y ago

I agree with your stance. I was confused to come here and read that people thought he was referring to Mighty. I think Mighty is a pretty small, easily proven/disproven, not-crazy idea, not-that-new idea, with niche applications. To me that is a bit different than how this article reads. I think the debate is market size. The only real debate I hear with Mighty is whether it is good for <10M people worldwide or >1B people worldwide.

DharmaPolice 6y ago

>4. An IT/corporate security department that is okay with them sending all of their keystrokes, login info, and browser data to a 3rd party service Or just an IT/security department that is blissfully unaware of the shenanigans that some of its users are up to. Especially if people are accessing this from outside of the corporate network to start with.

twobitshifter 6y ago

RE: 4. My company uses webmarshal which fronts requests and blocks pages deemed not good for productivity/data security. In that type of situation you already have an intermediary so mighty could make sense - make everyone use mighty and give it a custom blocklist. Obviously not a situation that employees would be a fan of, but it’s something that corporate is already doing, and mighty could improve the experience.