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Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

cloudrail.com

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Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#61
post #5
post #2

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

I don't claim to represent the average app developer but I've never so much as heard of CloudRail, them claiming to be a "Unified API integration leader" and all. I can't find them being written about by someone like Gartner; some other sources claim that they're a European startup in the IoT integration space. I guess I'm not sure what to make of some unknown-to-me company's study on usage of its own SDK for cloud s…

I looked at CloudRail, but the Dropbox and Google Drive API's are pretty easy to use.

Adding this layer of middleware is just another layer of complexity for us.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#63

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…

> Every desktop platform is supported.

Not every. Dropbox doesn't work on FreeBSD. But mobile client probably the best.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#64
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.

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…

And a family plan, so I can pay for higher tiers and share them between my wife and I.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#65
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of them before a couple times but frankly, I don't know how good the source is. Just considered it interesting and I'm a Dropbox only user as well.

I'm a "use all the free space I can get from whichever provider" user. Across the providers I use I have 207.25 GB of storage.Dropbox, Drive, Box, and OneDrive all integrate with Astro file manager on my phone. Media Fire and AT&T Locker thru only their own apps. Astro may or may not use cloud rail internally to abstract away the apis for each different server. Although Astro does not offer egnyte so probably not. Th…

I decided that it's not worth the hassle to keep track of so many accounts, so I fork over $2/month to get 100 GB on Google Drive. I was going to get OneDrive, but I have no need for the whole Office 365 shenanigans.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#66

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…

The key issue for me is that I don't currently need 1 TB, which is why I use Google Drive's 100 GB option. If Dropbox added a 250 GB option or something, I'd switch immediately.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#67

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…

rsync isn't enough. Bidirectional sync with nodes that can drop offline is a pain to handle.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#68
post #51

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…

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 - especial…

> If so how/when/where?

Linux. I'd love to use Google Drive since I have more space available there, but all the Linux clients for Drive suck since none of them is official and don't have as much features as the Dropbox client.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#69
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but lets say we just pick iOS users, how do you tell they use iCloud over Dropbox when some things do not give a choice? This is probably as good as we're gonna get from a third-party.

I guess every iOS user uses iCloud somehow. But for me it's just backup because it is so limited to the Apple world. Do they even have a public API?

iCloud is purely optional. You just need any email address for an AppleID for a functional phone with AppStore, notifications, etc.

Re: Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

#70
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but lets say we just pick iOS users, how do you tell they use iCloud over Dropbox when some things do not give a choice? This is probably as good as we're gonna get from a third-party.

I guess every iOS user uses iCloud somehow. But for me it's just backup because it is so limited to the Apple world. Do they even have a public API?

Yes: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Da...
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