Hmm. Ok, I will admit that you can derive a wide variety of benefits for yourself by assuming full control over the OS kernel yourself. On the other hand, I would also imagine you'll need to have a fairly significant effort getting an initial suite of apps developed, and you'll have an even more significant long-term burden maintaining and upgrading a custom OS... But I digress.

This is, I think, a fairly old view. A concept that is now widespread in the mobile world (and quickly working its way into the desktop world) is to have all apps run in their own private "sandbox". At least in the Android world, users have become accustomed to approving access to a variety of hardware and data sources whenever they install an app; so, the concept of "isolating" an app from the underlying system has already gone mainstream.

In any case, I just don't believe that a modern consumer base already fairly knowledgable about cloud computing and sandboxing would find it all that hard to understand a cross-platform "sandboxed OS".

True! I do admit having a specific target platform will ease the burden on creating a usable UI and a performant hardware interface. I just think you're giving up on what I personally think is the main advantage of cloud computing -- hardware independence.

For me, the only reason I would be interested in putting data in the cloud, is that the cloud is "everywhere"; I can access my data anywhere I go, using (in theory) any device connected to the internet. But if I use Solu, I'm tied to the Solu hardware. It doesn't matter if I have a beautiful 27 inch iMac in my den, or a powerful Surface Pro with me in my hotel room, or even an all-but-nonexistent Jolla tablet. I have to use the Solu hardware. If I use anything other than the Solu hardware, I'm not going to be using the Solu system.

I guess the issue I have here is that you're not just trying to create a new desktop computer, or a new operating system, or a new network data storage system; you're trying to do all of these things at once. Solu will apparently not take advantage of any user's existing desktop computers, or mobile devices, or network resources; and I would guess that there are very, very few potential Solu customers who haven't already invested quite a bit in one or more of these categories.

I guess, what I'm trying to say is that the approach Solu is taking just doesn't seem all that efficient to me. Solu users are probably going to be sacrificing quite a bit to completely buy in to your world-view...