The machines from which we manage our lives are called personal computers for a reason. Each of us has a unique desktop, our applications have access to a single, shared set of local files exclusively for us, and we can precisely personalize the operating system that holds it all together.
Or as one historian says, the goal of the personal computer was “to create a technological world adapted to one’s own desires”.
We gave up many of those privileges when we moved to the cloud. Our data is now crammed with the data of hundreds of millions of other people, our access to web applications depends on servers in the middle of nowhere and they all exist in their own isolated silos. Existing attempts cloud computing offers are nothing more than a remote workstation that delivers a virtual desktop instance to you. Can Space OS put the personal in the PC in the cloud?
A new startup, Deta is reimagining cloud computing. With a platform called Space OS, it wants to reinvent the concept on the same principle that underpins traditional PCs, which is that you own your data and software, and it won’t disappear if a website goes down somewhere. When you build your Deta cloud, it stores your data and runs the programs you choose to install on encrypted virtual machines just for you.
But here’s how Space OS works in practice. Once you sign up for it, you’ll land on an infinite dot-grid canvas that Deta calls the “Horizon” — as opposed to the blank, block-based home screen you’ll find on a Mac or Windows PC — where you can add an assortment of elements and shortcuts. You do this by clicking and holding the left mouse button and expanding it to create a rectangle of any size you want.
The horizon then asks you what you want to fill it with; You can install and place an application in it (as many as you want), a live web link like a YouTube video, plain text or media, and pretty much anything else you think of doing on your computer.
What’s particularly clever about the Horizon interface is that it scrolls horizontally. I find it fits the computer landscape and my own field of vision better. It allows me to comfortably scroll through multiple widgets without immediately losing sight of the ones before them. The apps themselves tend to have vertical scrolling, so it makes more logical sense and helps me more easily distinguish and choose which direction I want to go when I turn the mouse wheel.
Since you can also build multiple (splitable) Horizon screens, I was able to put multiple instances of the same service depending on the workspace I was in. In one, for example, I had a document open in a text editor, notes, and research cards for a story I was working on, while in the other I had an itinerary sheet and numerous windows for a vacation I was planning.
All this takes place on Dete website within the web browser and never once did I have to leave it for another tab. This is possible thanks to the way Deta applications are programmed. Out of the box, there are only a few rudimentary types of widgets you can add to your space, such as web links and text. However, for more specific use cases, you can go to “Discovery”, an app market that allows you to download and install third-party Deta apps. You can get it to store your files online, organize your reading lists, create websites, start a newsletter and much more.
If nothing fits your needs, you can even ask artificial intelligence to write a custom program for you. It’s not quite powerful enough to design complex software from scratch, but it can be handy when you want it for a small, specific task. For example, when I wanted to put a world clock with UK and US times in the corner, I typed a few words into the AI box and in less than a minute, a world clock with two columns for London and Los Angeles popped up. However, it can’t yet realize the grander visions Deta has for itself, such as, say, fetching output from ChatGPT and pasting it into a notes application.
Of course, all of this begs the question: why does Deta need proprietary software if you can just run a website inside it? The startup wants to break down those silos I mentioned earlier and allow each of your apps to seamlessly talk and sync with each other. In Deta’s ideal world, you wouldn’t have to juggle your data between a dozen online productivity tools from numerous brands for your work; you’ll be able to view your stuff no matter where you are, or even build a new program from scratch that pulls data from it and takes care of your specific workflow.
That’s easier said than done though. Although Deta has already laid the groundwork to enable such a high level of interoperability, developers will still need to put in some extra work to make their offerings compatible. Even if they do get involved, third parties may also soon encounter the chicken-and-egg conundrum that plagues any startup that has tried to establish a new app store. Most Deta apps currently have only a few thousand unique downloads — not nearly enough to sustain a developer team, and without their active participation, users would be reluctant to sign up.
If that sounds like just a slightly different form of the same cloud experience—after all, your computer is still hosted and managed at a remote location—it is to some extent, but Deta hopes that when all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, Bit will be much more convincing for those who want to build their life on the cloud.
Makes sense. Until now, although our lives have mostly migrated to the cloud, there is no defined web-centric OS, which, most importantly, overcomes some of the key challenges that people still face, such as lack of interoperability. Solutions like Chrome OS didn’t reinvent the browser, but built a traditional OS model around it. This is why early adopters like myself abandoned it because, at the end of the day, it offers little advantage over a Windows PC or Mac with Chrome.
However, a PC equipped exclusively with Deta’s Space OS makes more sense and can potentially have a competitive advantage, especially as more of our lives move to the cloud and AI automates much of it. It is still in the experimental stage and may not be the one to crack cloud computing for the masses. But I’m excited to see where it goes because it’s certainly better than using Windows 11 in the browser.