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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#101

Post by rogerbinns »

sithadmin wrote: post #75
mbreese wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has to do with how they use xattrs to manage the syncing. They now only support a single FS on each OS. You could certainly argue that other filesystems have the necessary capabilities, but Dropbox decided to only support ext4. It’s probably the dominant filesystem for Linux, but in a community as diverse as Linux, that means leaving out a lot of other potential customers. https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Error-mes…

>in a community as diverse as Linux, that means leaving out a lot of other potential customers After reaching a certain critical mass, maintaining additional features and functionality to reach potential customers is counterproductive. It directs resources away from the core product and customers. Given that Linux users probably represent the long tail of Dropbox customers, supporting anything other than the most mai…

> Given that Linux users probably represent the long tail of Dropbox customers ...

You also need to account for network effects. Every startup I have been at in the last decade went like this:

The engineers are using Linux, so for everyone to collaborate, a solution that works on Linux too is needed. That is a list of one - Dropbox, and they got their business accounts, and professional accounts.

Now Dropbox is dropped, or on the way out in all those places. Their lack of multi-account support (and I don't mean the nonsense they do pseudo merging accounts) also made it a huge pain anyway.

Re: The new Dropbox

#102

Post by chrismeller »

oauea wrote: post #76
dreamcompiler wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting tired of their constantly dropping support for older versions of MacOS (I don't upgrade MacOS often because every new version is a net productivity hit for me), and their upgrader daemon that A. Cannot be shut off, and B. Upgrades my Dropbox client whether I want it to or not. Even with Google's very determined auto-upgrader, I finally figured out how to shut it off. Not Dropbox. Here we go again. Every c…

If you refuse to update your software you deserve to have a hard time.

That’s a bit harsh. While I understand not wanting to perform a new OS update (at least not immediately) or not being able to (they deprecate old hardware too) I do understand that it’s a matter of resources and that most people are going to be on a handful of your most recent releases, so it makes sense to spend your time on those.

At the same time (most) people don’t actively seek to disable updates for things until something goes wrong. If your app is working on my current OS and filesystem it’s incumbent upon you to recognize that and not automatically push out an update that breaks that.

For something as relatively simple as Dropbox’s original functionality (all files from folder x are synced to their server and every other machine on your account) it also seems like a relatively reasonable ask for them to version things and continue to support that functionality for quite a long time.

Re: The new Dropbox

#103

Post by dreamcompiler »

Dwolb wrote: post #61

SaaS needs to chill out for like two seconds. What we’re seeing here is a strategic maneuver by Dropbox to move up the UX stack from a single file syncing tool to a meta/coordination layer between SaaS products. The goal is to own the user experience and integrate all the adjacent or overlapping SaaS tools in a user’s workflow so you can control both the user and the suppliers. We’re going to see this more frequently…

Agreed. The beauty of Dropbox used to be their utter invisibility. They just seamlessly synced my files in the background. If they're now going to insist on being "in my face," I'll take my business elsewhere. And whichever Dropbox vice president tried to make his bones with this project can pound sand.

Re: The new Dropbox

#104

Post by fencepost »

schnable wrote: post #82

You can pay a few bucks more, get cloud storage AND Office from Microsoft.

Less than that actually if it's personal (O365 Personal 1TB, Home up to 5 I think), or a little more for business and get OneDrive+SharePoint and hosted Exchange email. Works nicely on Windows 10, a little less so on older versions, and probably a lot less well on *nix which is relevant since a lot of folks on this thread are concerned about the loss of ZFS support. Not sure how it is on OS X but hopefully decent.

Re: The new Dropbox

#105

Post by CondensedBrain »

herf wrote: post #45

I really love Dropbox Paper, so I get part of the collaboration story. What I don't like is that it's so hard to share a file, or to send an image in a chat -- all paths lead to dropbox links instead. When I get a Dropbox link on mobile chat now, I know it's going to take nearly a minute to see the content. Why?

They probably think of it in terms of control. One of their big upsells is controlling access to shares. They don't see it as a problem that you have to save it to the device then share from that because it's not for you from their perspective. It's for people sending project assets to collaborators.

Re: The new Dropbox

#106

Post by rossdavidh »

So, it appears that Dropbox is letting feature creep turn a perfectly good product which I would have paid for forever, into one I need to leave. What is the best alternative? Just looking for automatic syncing and backup, and the historical versions available from the server is nice also. Suggestions? Simpler is better.

Re: The new Dropbox

#107

Post by maxxxxx »

I always get scared when I read “meet the new xxxxx”. Usually either the UI has been reshuffled or features have been dropped. It’s really rare that things get better with such an announcement.

Re: The new Dropbox

#108

Post by lm28469 »

pier25 wrote: post #69

WTF is going on at Dropbox? Are they losing so many users they now need to make this ridiculous integrations?

Gotta keep your oversized engineering team busy.

Same thing with airbnb, uber, &c. They constantly release side projects that are forgotten after a month and never used, even internally. Fonts, CSS frameworks, &c.

Re: The new Dropbox

#109

Post by faitswulff »

butteroverflow wrote: post #60
mmargerum wrote: post #59

Is there some open source version of something like rsync that is available to just sync between machines on a LAN? No cloud involved.

syncthing? https://syncthing.net/

Does anyone use SyncThing on iOS? Last I heard the support was read only from a now defunct app called fsync. Thinking about migrating my family over, but this is a blocker for me.

Re: The new Dropbox

#110

Post by larrywright »

peternicky wrote: post #46
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…

Your feedback resonates with me when I think about my experience with nearly every new software I come across. If it isn’t a monthly subscription (or the yearly option where I am ‘saving’ money) being shoved down my throat, more than likely I am being propositioned to pay for features that I simply don’t care about. One example, Airtable, has paid plans. In order to get the feature I want, I need to upgrade to the se…

One thing that bites me is that a lot of products are marketed at businesses rather than consumers. There are things I’d use for myself or my family, but the pricing is not conducive to that. Leankit is a great example. I’d love to use it, but it would be way too expensive to justify. Basecamp is the same way (didn’t used to be). The additional features that are used to justify the high price are things that only a business would need, and therefore not useful to me.

I get it, selling to businesses is where the money is at (and probably a lot less hassle than consumers). If I ran a SaaS company I’m sure I’d do the same thing. Still irks me that so many things are unavailable due to the high cost.

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