Most people really have 10 different WiFi networks? I have two. Home and work. Who has 10?
Apple solved this by supporting local backups. My phone backs up to my computer. When I restore to a new device, the backup goes with it.
When I set up a completely new device -- which happens only once every couple of years -- I set up WiFi again. I've never, ever, ever thought "oh wow, setting up WiFi is just So Hard! I wish Apple would store my private WiFI password on their servers by default without telling me first!".
iCloud backup does store your data on Apple's servers, but it's opt-in, and it makes it quite clear what will be stored.
Those who don't understand history are doomed to misinterpret its lessons.
Do you remember the OSI binary protocols as designed back in the day?
ASN.1 as far as the eye could see. OIDs. MIBs. Loosely defined extensibility. Terrible, complex protocol designs.
This had nothing to do with the protocols being binary or text; the protocols themselves were painfully complex, making it difficult and frustrating to write a working implementation, much less a complete and interoperating implementations.
> ... at this layer the efficiency does not pay off (i.e. the size of the HTTP header leading that 5MB image does not really matter).
"I don't care about RTT time, the lack of bidirectional communication, and the inability to inline binary data in the protocol stream" ... said no mobile/wireless/desktop developer, ever.
> One of the comments here pulled a comparison I did not remember any more: SS7 vs SIP.
I've implemented SIP. It was a massive hassle because it was text-based and annoying and difficult to parse. The available SIP libraries tend to be buggy and incomplete, and people actually pay for workable SIP stacks. I'd rather not look at SIP ever again.
That isn't to say SS7 is better, it doesn't appear to be. As far as I can tell, that's because it was badly designed, not because of a flaw inherent in using binary encodings.
I'm not really convinced that this is an interesting feature.
People tend to choose store brands for a myriad of reasons, and stores tend to differentiate themselves based on those market divisions.
Paying a premium to get a single delivery with items from both (which is something that has a lot of logistical issues) doesn't seem like something with substantive draw.
That's $8.5M they're going to spend proving (or disproving) market viability, at which point, if it's working:
- The stores themselves will just roll out their own competing services. They can't afford for a middle man to eat their margins.
- Existing players like Fresh Direct will leverage their complete control over stock and distribution to beat them on price and service. There's a lot of wiggle room when you don't have to deal with stocking physical store shelves.
I guess, thanks to AirBNB/Uber, that 'collaborative consumption' is the new hot VC investment.
Apple solved this by supporting local backups. My phone backs up to my computer. When I restore to a new device, the backup goes with it.
When I set up a completely new device -- which happens only once every couple of years -- I set up WiFi again. I've never, ever, ever thought "oh wow, setting up WiFi is just So Hard! I wish Apple would store my private WiFI password on their servers by default without telling me first!".
iCloud backup does store your data on Apple's servers, but it's opt-in, and it makes it quite clear what will be stored.