alt Hacker NewsI 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.