I've known Buck for a few years, and I'm always excited when a new thing of his comes out. Buck, can you talk about why you guys built Remotely, and why we might use it over other options in the space?
@staringispolite Aw thanks Jonathan!
We have been working on Remotely for six (!) years to give people an alternative to traditional cloud storage solutions. Using Remotely lets you keep your content on your own devices, away from 3rd parties. The connection between your device and your Mac is direct and encrypted with DTLS.
You can think of Remotely similar to a zero-configuration VNC client that is optimized around browsing & accessing files.
Howdy everyone!
Today is an exciting and super scary day for us. Back in 2010 when we launched Here, File File (the precursor to Remotely), the app store was a very different place. People bought apps, Apple was showing them in commercials, there were tons of outlets for app reviews out there.
Now, six years later, things have changed. Even OmniGroup, the last bastion of paid premium iOS software, has gone free to download + IAP. There aren't as many app review outlets, and we find Product Hunt to be a crucial resource to reach out to people and share our vision.
I wrote a bunch of words in the form of a Medium post (https://medium.com/remotelyapp/a... - 3 minute read) about our goals and history and whatnot.
We are very proud of Remotely and can't wait to dig in and make it even better. So please, hit us up with questions, feature requests, whatever!
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Great work, except for not being upfront about this only working free for the documents folder. Definitely, sparks an instant unhappy reaction I'm sure lots of aren't fond of.
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@northdakoda What are you talking about?? The video says it's "free to try" with both "monthly" and "annual" subscription models. Just because you make assumptions and don't pay attention doesn't mean they are trying to pull a fast one on you...
@northdakoda Definitely don't want to be misleading at all. Can I ask what your path to download was so I can see if we can fit the pricing structure in there somewhere?
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@metalhaze I didn't watch the video. That shouldn't be the only place it's mentioned. You're in fact assuming I and everyone else (typical users) will watch all the videos read every piece of material they produced across all their platforms before trying anything.
Try going from the main page linked from the 'get it' button, through to the app store, look at the images, and you'll have to try really hard to find where it clearly mentions the features promoted are mostly subscription based. - It's just not clearly indicated for users who skim (most users).
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@buckwilson I went from the linked page on here (http://getremotely.com/) and hit both download buttons. Didn't see any clear indications that it would only work for the documents folder. I did look at the app store images, and the description above the fold and didn't see anything that really prepped me. I did see later that it was at the bottom of the app store description though).
Possibly something on that landing page, or in the app store verbiage, that hints that I start with some limits before I get to it in the setup would work.
The product is really cool and works well, was just caught off guard when I was setting up and wanted to share my thoughts.
@northdakoda We currently have a full "how this free app works" section at the top of our app description as well as more explanation further down, which talks about the Documents limitation. Thanks for the feedback and we'll see what else we can do to make the trial version limitations clearer!
This seems to help the limited iCloud push that limits just viewing documents folder, which I'm frustrated by. Is there any plan for backups or remote storage in the future?
@smcguinness Thanks for checking Remotely out!
Currently remote storage isn't on the roadmap, as we are focused on providing a way to access your files without having them pass through any other servers. In all honesty it would probably augment a backup / remote storage solution like Backblaze very nicely (this is the combo I use personally).
@smcguinness the tech behind Remotely is more focused on a direct point-to-point encrypted channel, rather than third party servers. A big point behind Remotely is that there are no access or storage limits because you aren't utilizing any servers to store your files!
@updatedjustnow so Remotely is actually a direct connection to your computer, instead of moving select files up to a server (a la iCloud Drive). This means there are no storage limits and you have access to your entire filesystem.
Same goes for file hosting services like Box and Dropbox.
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