I'm not some crazy "local-first" religious zealot. I understand that building applications that use cloud services is important and useful. But I also think that there are many cases where it's unacceptable for your app to require the internet. Today's experience with this app called Klevio has boiled my blood and I'm going to rant about it. Hopefully this will spur their developers to rethink their sins and make the app better.

Here's what I ran into today. Now I'm sure you know where I'm going with this.

So I'm in London for a long business trip and I usually like to use AirBnB to find a place to stay. Most hosts, I never meet and often they give me access to some remote access application that can unlock doors so that I can get in. This particular AirBnB host uses an app called Klevio to give me remote access to enter the building.

However, when I enter the building to get to the unit, I'm in a long basement that has barely any internet connection often times all connectivity disappears. So today, I was unfortunate to have lost all connectivity and I tried to unlock the door to get into the building. I was greeted with the above screen. I was unable to unlock the door and I was completely stuck outside. To make things worse, the application froze with some corrupted cache (god knows what it was doing). Because when I tried to restart the application, it was stuck on the loading screen.

So I had to walk around the block to get some internet connection, to reinstall the application, re-login, and then unlock the door from outside the building. I had to run to the unit door to get in before the door locked again! This is completely unacceptable. I'm not sure what the developers were thinking when they built this application. I'm sure they were thinking that they were building a "cloud-first" application.

I shouldn't always need an internet connection to open a door.
What happens if the Klevio cloud went down? Would thousands of people be locked out of their homes? Luckily the weather was good, but what if it was in the middle of a storm or in the cold of winter?

In the developer community we talk a lot about Offline-First, Peer to Peer Connections, Local-First, blah blah blah. These are all developer buzzwords tha we like to throw around and they don't really stick because it's devoid of a connection to real people and real problems.

Do not build a cloud-first mission critical mobile app

If you are building an app that is mission critical it must not be cloud-first. It must be able to work without an internet connection. What other apps are mission critical?

Mobile apps for healthcare workers and hospitals
Apps for pilots and airline crew (flight attendants, security)
Military apps for soldiers and armed forces
Apps for industrial, mining, construction and oil workers
Retail and commerce

No not every app needs to work without the internet. But if it's mission critical, it is a requirement.

Klevio, if you are reading this, please get your act together. Do not be a lock company and lock people out because of a short sighted cloud-first mentality.