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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#331

Post by ken »

octorian wrote: post #238
atonse wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really true? wow. I'm shocked that a company of Dropbox's size hasn't built native clients for each platform (or rearchitected the core to be based on something like Go or Rust that is fast and cross platform, and just building the UI parts in the native frameworks)

For reasons I cannot fathom, it seems like bigger companies are far less likely to justify the resources to build multi-platform native software than smaller ones.

Seems logical (if depressing) to me: companies that do less work to customize their product to their target customers will find it easier to get big in the first place. Companies that care about craftsmanship above all else have to deal with being small. The violinmaker down the street from me does excellent work but he's never going to be as big as Toyota.

Companies like Dropbox tend to make the bulk of their money by selling to other businesses, as well, which by definition is the set of customers who care more about volume and price than craftsmanship.

Pretend you're a Dropbox salesperson, and your job is to go to other companies to sell them on enterprise Dropbox. How many times do you think you're going to hear someone challenge you on what version of Python the Mac client uses? It just doesn't happen.

There's many small ("indie") companies that make great Mac software, and do it by being Mac-only. That means they'll never be huge, but it also means they're never going to have a second-rate Mac client.

Re: The new Dropbox

#332

Post by icebraining »

bretpiatt wrote: post #326
liyanage wrote: post #203

I've been a Dropbox user for many years but I'm looking for a replacement. What drives me nuts and hasn't gotten better over the years is their truly awful Python-based macOS client software. It is constantly burning a ton of CPU/battery. It's always at or near the top of Activity Monitor's list in the Energy tab. It seems like their app constantly reacts to any file system activity, even if that activity is outside…

When you say 'support symlinks' what behavior would you expect the service to have with them? I run a company with sync software, we treat them same as any other file so if you have one in a folder set to sync, we sync it, we don't follow the link and sync the linked file (as the link could go outside of the configured sync folder).

I guess you're doing it the way liyanage prefers. Dropbox, on the other hand, follows symlinks: https://aurelio.net/articles/dropbox-symlinks.html

Re: The new Dropbox

#333

Post by dawnerd »

liyanage wrote: post #203

I've been a Dropbox user for many years but I'm looking for a replacement. What drives me nuts and hasn't gotten better over the years is their truly awful Python-based macOS client software. It is constantly burning a ton of CPU/battery. It's always at or near the top of Activity Monitor's list in the Energy tab. It seems like their app constantly reacts to any file system activity, even if that activity is outside…

No battery issues with google filesync on my mac. I do wish however that they'd spend some time improving it. Sometimes files never leave the cache which end up taking up a lot of space.

Solution of course is to just use rclone and mount Google drive directly.

For the price Google beats everyone.

Re: The new Dropbox

#334

Post by michelb »

rootusrootus wrote: post #268
mirthflat83 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iCloud doesnt offer file history though. Once you accidentally delete a file, it’s gone.

Apple claims otherwise: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH27917?locale=en_US

That’s only for deletion, not when you accidentally overwrite something. Or a file got overwritten by something else or got corrupted etc.

Re: The new Dropbox

#335

Post by tzs »

signal11 wrote: post #236
azinman2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it doesn’t work nearly as well. He underestimated how hard it would be to solve it properly.

iCloud is great for Mac/iOS users. I never felt it worked well on Windows. It never felt right. So yes, Apple still has work to do if they want wider iCloud use. Maybe they don't want to? But Microsoft and Google are creeping up. Their file sync is almost there with Dropbox. OneDrive works on Mac and Windows, supports Files on Demand (similar to Dropbox Infinite - essentially placeholder files, very useful for small…

> The kicker is that OneDrive costs $99 as part of Office 365 Home, and gives you + 5 family members each 1TB storage, GBs of Outlook storage, the desktop Office apps for all devices including Android (they run really well on Android-enabled Chromebooks)

For those who haven't looked at Office 365 in a while, it should be noted that Office 365 Personal was upgraded a few months ago. It used to be that Personal was for 1 person, with at most 1 Mac, 1 PC, and one mobile device. If you wanted to put the Office applications on more devices than that, you needed Home.

They removed that limit a few months ago. Now Personal lets you install on an unlimited number of computers and mobile devices, with the only limit being at most 5 can be signed in at the same time.

So now it essentially is if you have more than one person in your household who would like an Office 365 account, get Home. That covers 6 people, each of whom gets 1 TB of OneDrive, and can be signed in on up to 5 devices simultaneously. If it is just you, get Personal, which is $30/year less.

I've not figured out if it is possible to buy additional OneDrive storage if you need more than the 1 TB that is included.

Re: The new Dropbox

#336

Post by dawnerd »

redfern314 wrote: post #220
liyanage wrote: post #203

I've been a Dropbox user for many years but I'm looking for a replacement. What drives me nuts and hasn't gotten better over the years is their truly awful Python-based macOS client software. It is constantly burning a ton of CPU/battery. It's always at or near the top of Activity Monitor's list in the Energy tab. It seems like their app constantly reacts to any file system activity, even if that activity is outside…

Google's is much worse for any significant number of files. It burns a bunch of CPU/battery like you described for Dropbox, but it also freezes eventually and has to be force-killed. I gave up trying to sync my former Dropbox files to Drive.

Drive does seem to run into their own API limits which is kinda dumb for a product targeting business use.

Re: The new Dropbox

#337

Post by jpmattia »

For all the gnashing of teeth on this thread, I think the bigger point is being missed:

Most of the Dropbox post is pitching for collaboration. They have probably recognized that catering to teams has much better revenue growth than mere individual users.

Re: The new Dropbox

#338

Post by _jyog »

Oh yay, a new interface to learn. Just what every body asked for, not. Companies do this all the time to justify higher prices. Some times, a well-done piece of software can just go into maintenance mode for a while.

But do you know what I hate about dropbox? Dropping support for most linux filesystems. Seriously, why? That was the one deciding factor for me. I had looked at other options, but that did it. Owncloud does a fine job, and most people at my company like it fine.

Re: The new Dropbox

#340

Post by gus_massa »

Sorry for been negative, but I liked the simplicity of the old Dropbox: You create a magical folder in a machine, a magical folder in another machine, and they are automatically synchronized using pixie dust or something. I don't want a new social media network.
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