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Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

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Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#151
post #119
post #38

The fact that Dropbox's revenue is well above Box's if the rumors in the article are true is a great positive sign. As is being cash flow positive which would indicate that if they are burning cash it isn't at the rate of 2x revenue that Box has been a victim of. However, the vision they are selling will not come to pass. That of them being a collaborative platform. Google docs, slack, and a myriad of other tools hav…

| In the meantime Dropbox's core offering of syncing and sharing files seamlessly as well as providing more security minded options for businesses is something that no one else has quite gotten right. There is absolutely no mention whatsoever neither in the article, nor in your analysis above about Owncloud. Owncloud (or any OSS fork thereof) is an existential threat to Dropbox's core offering: while the consumer sid…

Yes because Owncloud will never get the kind of adoption that Dropbox has specifically because it isn't consumer oriented.

It's just like Linux. It can own the backend / developer world, but Linux is still no where on the desktop for the average consumer.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#152

Dropbox is one of those products that is just a pleasure to use (like Stripe). Sync works seamlessly. I've tried all other alternatives and gotten back to being a paid customer of Dropbox. I think it also boils down to most of your employees being passionate, smart folks from MIT, CMU and the like. Good luck to them with the IPO.

The product works well for consumer use cases. However, when it comes to business use their technology isn't there yet. The upcoming Project Infinite will however be a step forward.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value that Dropbox provides isn't the sharing, nor the protocol - it's the failure-free merging algorithm (I intentionally said "merging" not "syncing"). The magic is what happens locally - not on the network.

Interesting. Do they also merge file formats like .DOC and .PSD?

Nope (though I'd love that). By "merging" I mean things like folder trees. But Dropbox gets so many nice details right that competitors and homegrown solutions tend not to think of:

* When syncing a folder tree (uploading or downloading), it transfers files smallest to largest (globally across all files queuing to sync, regardless of folder). This simple algorithm is remarkably close to optimal behavior.

* When modifying a small file while larger ones are syncing, the small file immediately cuts to the front of the line (even sub-file). This avoids situations where a large folder uploading or downloading prevents you from getting the utility of the quick syncing of small work files.

* Files deleted from the server or another computer are briefly retained on the client in a special folder before being deleted from local storage so that their contents can be matched to other incoming files. In other words, even for very complex folder move and file rename operations, if the new files contain the same data as the old ones in whatever permutations, the client will sort it all out without re-transferring actual file data.

* There are no data loss holes. All operations are on a files-first basis (not folder-first), and Dropbox will never decide that a file was intended to be deleted unless the client app explicitly observes deletion. You don't need to worry that offline renames or moves, even multiple conflicting ones from different machines will result in deletions when the Dropbox clients go back online.

* "No data loss holes" also applies to conflicts of a single file. If a file is modified in two different ways by offline clients, one file or the other will be renamed to make sure that a modification isn't lost.

* The Dropbox client never gets stuck requiring the user to "resolve conflicts". It picks the sanest thing to do and does it (always observing the "never lose data" principle). Syncing is delightful and never fails, not a chore to be dreaded and carefully planned for with a bunch of "conflict" choices, like all systems prior to Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#154
post #144

My primary use case for Dropbox, actually, is getting videos onto my iPhone. You can't simply drag and drop a video file into the phone as a mass storage device. With ITunes, the sync feature purportedly sync the video to the device, and consumes space accordingly, but there's no way to access the video on the device. It's actually way faster for me to upload a video to Dropbox from my computer, and download the vide…

I'm using Waltr[0] for this, works great. [0]: https://softorino.com/w2

Looks nice. But $40 bucks though?

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#155
post #103
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly whoever can make the easiest way to share photos between iPhones will win. That and just store all of my photos forever.

You know Apple already offers that, right? I don't want to sound like an Apple shill so I will avoid naming the feature; apple is big enough that if they can't get the word out it's not my problem!

Nope.. I can't directly iMessage a large video or photo set. Also photo stream requires syncing photos on multiple devices.. what we really need is upload to the cloud and forget (or at least browse on demand) and not require local storage... This is really only a problem for the lower end iPhones.. but it sucks.

And iMessage should just do this transparently.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#156
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try OverGrive. It changed my (Linux) life. It's as good as the official OS X client.

Insync is also very good.

> Go to site > $29 > Not your currency? > select € > €29 > Select £ > £29

Even going past the fact that OverGrive is $5, I won't support companies that think currency conversion is a way to leech more money from non-US customers. Yeah yeah taxes, but then the £ price should be around £27 and not £29. Its crystal clear what they're doing.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#157
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly whoever can make the easiest way to share photos between iPhones will win. That and just store all of my photos forever.

try giving google photos a try. I have been using google photos for a long time now (it used to be called picasa). PS: I am a google employee, but my opinion on google photos literally has no bias. I don't use Iphone, I own android, so YMMV.

I have to second this. It's amazing how right Google has gotten the photo experience, incrementally, over the past few years. Meanwhile, photo on iOS have essentially stood still during that time.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#158
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you using the web UI? Dropbox is at its best as just a folder on your hard drive that works like any other, except it effectively exists simultaneously on all your devices.

I'm going to guess that the person also uses Google docs and or slides which is mostly web-based -- yes you can download it for offline use but that's a hassle.

I use both the sync client and the web app (depends on the situation). The web app for the google suite is just so much better, the Dropbox website is painful. The sync client for Dropbox I used to find slightly better, but it's not better enough to justify the massive license costs of Dropbox in comparison to google drive. All in all, each to their own!
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