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Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

cloudrail.com

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Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#51

Post by e12e »

Afforess wrote: post #14
Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

Dropbox works. Put aside all the concerns over War Crimes or Spying, or Security, Dropbox simply works. Every mobile platform is supported. Every desktop platform is supported. Sharing, Teams, direct links, all the core features are there. Anyone can safely recommend and share Dropbox files with their Grandma (with a PC still running XP), or their Mac loving parents, or their weird hipster friend running Gentoo GNU/L…

Do you find Dropbox to work any better than Google drive? If so how/when/where?

I'm pretty firmly in the if-can't-self-host-i-don't-care camp (which rules out Dropbox and drive alike) - but I've recently had reason to share documents at work, without any in-house infrastructure. And the combination of "good enough" Google docs and sheets along with easy to use drive on laptop/desktop/mobile is hard to beat - especially with a pretty easy learning curve.

I only whish drive had the ability to mark a "folder" as available offline, as the fiction of 4g everywhere gets a bit tiresome when you find yourself on a mountain and need to pull up your list of students to make sure you haven't left someone to bleed out on the way up (ok, for that you practice the buddy system and have a paper backup. But it's still nice to work on notes offline wherever you are and have them sync, without offline-first being something special).

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#52

Post by duaneb »

larrik wrote: post #2

From among CloudRail powered mobile apps. Meaning iCloud isn't considered at all. Interesting finding, but needs an asterisk.

Does iCloud even allow storing arbitrary files? I can't even figure out how to drag and drop a file from my mac to the icloud drive, let alone retrieve it from the iOS side.

I don't think you can compare iCloud with general purpose storage; it seems angled towards iOS app integrations instead.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#53

Post by lqdc13 »

jasonsync wrote: post #40
Afforess wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox works. Put aside all the concerns over War Crimes or Spying, or Security, Dropbox simply works. Every mobile platform is supported. Every desktop platform is supported. Sharing, Teams, direct links, all the core features are there. Anyone can safely recommend and share Dropbox files with their Grandma (with a PC still running XP), or their Mac loving parents, or their weird hipster friend running Gentoo GNU/L…

Agreed, it's just got to work. We're working on an alternative: https://www.sync.com/your-privacy/

No Linux unfortunately.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#54

Post by acdha »

danatkinson wrote: post #49
acdha wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has a very poor business model, security issues and the storage for the price just doesn't add up. Google Drive or iCloud are far easier to set up, cheaper, and has oodles more space. That's three major questions begged in a single sentence, followed by 3 more in the next. Perhaps if you tried to back up each of those claims, you'd have an easier time understanding. “Poor business model” would be the first place…

Poor business model: I refer to their freemium offering which is poor compared to competitors. Security: If you think that's a judgement call, fine, if you think that the dropbox hack is a judgment issue. Pricing: For Joe Bloggs, 100GB is generally enough. Google handily offers that for $2. With Dropbox, there's a cliff - a few gig for free or a terabyte for $10/m. Why no middle ground? Both Apple and Google offer sc…

> Poor business model: I refer to their freemium offering which is poor compared to competitors.

Okay, that's a start, do you think you can explain some of the analysis backing the opinion which you assumed everyone else shared?

> Security: If you think that's a judgement call, fine, if you think that the dropbox hack is a judgment issue.

If we stopped using any company which has had a security problem, we wouldn't be using computers. That's why I said it was a judgement call: one incident years ago is not much of a trend line so different people might reasonably have different comfort levels.

> Pricing: For Joe Bloggs, 100GB is generally enough. Google handily offers that for $2. With Dropbox, there's a cliff - a few gig for free or a terabyte for $10/m. Why no middle ground? Both Apple and Google offer scaled plans, why doesn't Dropbox?

Oh, now there's a valid question about the business model: perhaps they should have a middle tier. That's what you should have said instead of claiming that Dropbox was more expensive or whatever “the storage for the price just doesn't add up” was supposed to mean.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#55

Post by stormbeta »

yid wrote: post #13
Wintamute wrote: post #10

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the…

> I don't know why people put up with it? Lock-in? Once you have a few gigs up on Dropbox, it's a bit of a challenge transferring it elsewhere.

Not really. I stay with Dropbox because, as others have said, it just works, and it does so across pretty much every major platform, both desktop and mobile. Cloud storage is their core product, and it shows. And the pricing really isn't that different from other similar solutions from what I've seen.

The few times I tried to use Drive, it was considerably more hassle to work with (and slow), iCloud was right out because it's Apple-platforms only, and my experiences with OneNote's sync issues makes me wary of trying OneDrive. Haven't looked at Box since I was under the impression it was aimed at businesses/enterprise more than individuals.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#56

Post by olentangy »

duaneb wrote: post #52
larrik wrote: post #2

From among CloudRail powered mobile apps. Meaning iCloud isn't considered at all. Interesting finding, but needs an asterisk.

Does iCloud even allow storing arbitrary files? I can't even figure out how to drag and drop a file from my mac to the icloud drive, let alone retrieve it from the iOS side. I don't think you can compare iCloud with general purpose storage; it seems angled towards iOS app integrations instead.

Um, it's trivial to drag any file on a Mac into iCloud. Look in the sidebar in the Finder, between Favorites and Devices is iCloud. Click there to see the contents of your iCloud storage.

On iOS, the iCloud Drive app lets you see everything in iCloud storage as well.

Certainly iOS app integration is important in iCloud, but it functions perfectly well for any other use too.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#57

Post by jasonsync »

__jal wrote: post #42
jasonsync wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it's just got to work. We're working on an alternative: https://www.sync.com/your-privacy/

Dunno why you're getting down voted. Sounds like great news to me! Will you have a Linux client? (I'm sure that's the least favorite question new services like this get.) I ripped Dropbox out by the roots on all of my systems some time back because of the contempt they display for their users. New, more privacy- and security-conscious services are nice (as are ones that don't break their users' machines and then go w…

We hope to get to a Linux client at some point, however, the demand for our Windows, Mac and mobile apps has been keeping us really busy. Our primary focus right now is on the platform, as the cloud is only king when it's stable, reliable and fast.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#59

Post by eridius »

olentangy wrote: post #56
duaneb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does iCloud even allow storing arbitrary files? I can't even figure out how to drag and drop a file from my mac to the icloud drive, let alone retrieve it from the iOS side. I don't think you can compare iCloud with general purpose storage; it seems angled towards iOS app integrations instead.

Um, it's trivial to drag any file on a Mac into iCloud. Look in the sidebar in the Finder, between Favorites and Devices is iCloud. Click there to see the contents of your iCloud storage. On iOS, the iCloud Drive app lets you see everything in iCloud storage as well. Certainly iOS app integration is important in iCloud, but it functions perfectly well for any other use too.

In the Finder, iCloud Drive is also available in the Go menu, or with the keyboard shortcut ⌘⇧I

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#60

Post by mattkevan »

duaneb wrote: post #52
larrik wrote: post #2

From among CloudRail powered mobile apps. Meaning iCloud isn't considered at all. Interesting finding, but needs an asterisk.

Does iCloud even allow storing arbitrary files? I can't even figure out how to drag and drop a file from my mac to the icloud drive, let alone retrieve it from the iOS side. I don't think you can compare iCloud with general purpose storage; it seems angled towards iOS app integrations instead.

macOS Sierra syncs the desktop and documents folders across all your Macs and makes the files available in the iOS iCloud Drive app as well.

It's really handy - I've pretty much stopped using Dropbox, except to share files with people on other platforms.

With a few (and lessening) limitations, iCloud is becoming the general user-accessible filesystem that iOS has lacked since the beginning.

All that's needed now is a download manager in safari.

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