I worked on both Lotus Notes and Groove. What's great about Ray is that he has the capacity and drive to be involved in every part of the project. He drove high-level business requirements and wrote code and also cared about icons and colors. But he did it all without arrogance and allowed his team to argue back when necessary.
In case anyone is interested, a while back I wrote about another Ray Ozzie project: Live Mesh: <a href="https://gridwhale.medium.com/live-mesh-and-the-future-of-computing-6b3c498a6ccd" rel="nofollow">https://gridwhale.medium.com/live-mesh-and-the-future-of-com...
I was an early adopter of Live Mesh, and thought it was awesome. From the outside, it was mind-boggling that it didn’t gain traction.
You write about it as an idea that has been abandoned, but I think really it is an idea that has become distributed over other systems. iCloud Photos works essentially the same way Live Mesh implemented it. Apps use iCloud as a storage medium with built in backup and sync. Apps are collaborative by default now.
But I suppose I only had my own vision of the product as a user, maybe your aspirations go further.
You're absolutely right that all apps have evolved in the same direction, not necessarily because they were inspired by Live Mesh, but mostly because it's a pretty obvious/useful direction.
I think Live Mesh wanted to be the platform piece of that so that (e.g.,) iCloud Photos wouldn't have to implement that themselves. Moreover, it would allow users to have a unified management of the distributed system instead of dealing with each app separately. That's the part I miss.
GMoromisato · · focus · HN ↗
In case anyone is interested, a while back I wrote about another Ray Ozzie project: Live Mesh: <a href="https://gridwhale.medium.com/live-mesh-and-the-future-of-computing-6b3c498a6ccd" rel="nofollow">https://gridwhale.medium.com/live-mesh-and-the-future-of-com...
nxc18 · · focus · HN ↗
You write about it as an idea that has been abandoned, but I think really it is an idea that has become distributed over other systems. iCloud Photos works essentially the same way Live Mesh implemented it. Apps use iCloud as a storage medium with built in backup and sync. Apps are collaborative by default now.
But I suppose I only had my own vision of the product as a user, maybe your aspirations go further.
GMoromisato · · focus · HN ↗
I think Live Mesh wanted to be the platform piece of that so that (e.g.,) iCloud Photos wouldn't have to implement that themselves. Moreover, it would allow users to have a unified management of the distributed system instead of dealing with each app separately. That's the part I miss.