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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#11

Post by microtonal »

Me and my wife ended both ended our Dropbox Plus subscriptions last weekend (after being paying users for five years or so). As a side-effect, my mom also cancelled her subscription (since she was using it to share photos with us).

The primary reasons:

- Constant nagging in the user interface to upgrade to Dropbox Pro or Dropbox Business. Don't want it, don't need it.

- Accumulation of a lot of UI clutter over the years. When you used to log in, you just your files. Now you get suggestions, unread comments, or whatever.

- Dropping support for file systems outside ext4. One of my machines uses Linux on ZFS, now I need to LD_PRELOAD shims to make Dropbox work. No, I am not switching back to ext4 for you, Dropbox.

- The camel that broke the straw's back: raising the prices from 10 to 12 Euro per month. It is not like we can't afford it. But storage and bandwidth gets cheaper, but Dropbox gets more expensive. We do not need the new features: why would I need 2TB if I am only using 200-300GB of space? And no, I don't want Smart Sync, which puts itself in ring-0 through a kernel module.

If Dropbox had just stuck to its nice, clean, and simple interface, focusing on syncing across machines with various OSes or file systems, we would still be happy, paying users. They wouldn't have to add anything (though the File Requests feature was nice). Just don't bother me with nonsense and let me do my work and share with family + friends.

Re: The new Dropbox

#12

Post by Traster »

I strongly feel this is a bad direction for Dropbox. Many companies have tried to integrate tools together. It's always half-baked simply because those tools aren't designed to be integrated. I find it kind of odd Dropbox would be bragging about a dropdown menu to create a Google doc. Surely if that's important to me I get Google drive - the integration will be better because the same company makes the different tools and you can actually stay within the eco-system. If Dropbox are planning to compete with this it's very difficult to see how they win over Google.

The integration with Google makes sense because they already own the tools that you're moving between. It seems really funky to have Dropbox crash that party. If you're trying to integrate with tools outside of the Google eco-system maybe dropbox atleast tries to allow it, I just can't see how it'd be anything other than clunky though.

Personally what I value is just basic cloud storage with a decent automatic sync. Obviously storage has turned into a commodity and dropbox are trying to compete on a new level, it just seems boggling to me that this is the direction they've taken.

Re: The new Dropbox

#13

Post by rangibaby »

I like Dropbox again lately.

They added smart sync and 1TB extra to “plus” accounts, which is nice after their pathetic use of Finder integration + OS notifications to nag users to upgrade to the next paid tier (on a paid account!). It’s what they should have done in the first place.

Re: The new Dropbox

#14

Post by ionwake »

Can someone summarise the changes in a couple of sentences? I haven't got a clue what the differences are after sepdning a couple of minutes on the site.

Thank you

Re: The new Dropbox

#15

Post by sciurus »

It looks like Dropbox is completely focused on the business market and not improving the consumer experience anymore. I've stuck with them for years because of the linux support, but am probably going to jump ship soon. My main complaint is the lack of a way to build a shared photo library with my spouse. Both Google and Apple support this.

Re: The new Dropbox

#16

Post by manuelmagic »

timdiggerm wrote: post #5

At least the interface is still the same colors, instead of the gross palette of the blog and their rebrand.

I really don't get why they are throwing away a nice, clean, smooth interface to embrace a new big "touchy" UI even on the browser and the desktop. I understand it's important to implement a native App for smartphones and tablets, but I do not like at all the trend to transform the desktop UI with big buttons, huge padding everywhere etc. (GMail style).

Re: The new Dropbox

#18

Post by vorpalhex »

microtonal wrote: post #11

Me and my wife ended both ended our Dropbox Plus subscriptions last weekend (after being paying users for five years or so). As a side-effect, my mom also cancelled her subscription (since she was using it to share photos with us). The primary reasons: - Constant nagging in the user interface to upgrade to Dropbox Pro or Dropbox Business. Don't want it, don't need it. - Accumulation of a lot of UI clutter over the ye…

Yup, same here. Switched to pCloud which seems nice enough so far though rudimentary.

Re: The new Dropbox

#19

Post by vorpalhex »

ionwake wrote: post #14

Can someone summarise the changes in a couple of sentences? I haven't got a clue what the differences are after sepdning a couple of minutes on the site. Thank you

"Enterprise" features including half baked slack integrations, and web shortcuts like it's 1999

Re: The new Dropbox

#20

Post by heinrichhartman »

microtonal wrote: post #11

Me and my wife ended both ended our Dropbox Plus subscriptions last weekend (after being paying users for five years or so). As a side-effect, my mom also cancelled her subscription (since she was using it to share photos with us). The primary reasons: - Constant nagging in the user interface to upgrade to Dropbox Pro or Dropbox Business. Don't want it, don't need it. - Accumulation of a lot of UI clutter over the ye…

Same here cancelled after they dropped ZFS support.
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