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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#461

Post by ryanmack »

pwthornton wrote: post #351
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…

Just use iCloud. I switched a few years ago. It works really well. Unless you are using Dropbox with a team or a corporate environment, iCloud is better. I use a combo of iCloud (love the desktop syncing between my machines btw), and Google File Stream for team documents.

Really limited on features no? No smart sync, revisions, or easy link sharing.

Re: The new Dropbox

#462

Post by alpb »

Dropbox is constantly getting worse for personal usage. They recently bumped up the prices about $10+ a year.

As a photo storage, it fails heavily as well. They turned down the Carousel app which made it super easy to browse photos over time. Google Photos easily dominates this space with the search features. Right now the Photos experience on Dropbox lacks the most basic features and I'm planning to stop renewing my personal Dropbox subscription this year, primarily because of poor photo storage support.

For everything else, I'm planning to just go with S3/GCS and just rsync my files in there periodically.

Re: The new Dropbox

#463

Post by TeMPOraL »

jamesmcintyre wrote: post #217
Traster wrote: post #12

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 tool…

I might not be fully understanding your point but I would disagree with the idea that just because many companies have tried to integrate tools together and failed that it must point to some inherent flaw in the idea itself. Instead it should just point to inherent difficulties in executing the idea. All of our tools having silos of data and only having difficult to implement one-to-one integrations seems broken- it…

> All of our tools having silos of data and only having difficult to implement one-to-one integrations seems broken- it does not feel like it has to be this way as part of the nature of the software.

The problem is completely self-inflicted and caused by greed. It isn't difficult to make software interoperable - you actually have to work hard to make it non-interoperating. Which is precisely what aforementioned companies did by creating data siloses exporting just tightly-controlled APIs, guarded by ToSes preventing interop from happen organically. SaaS companies broke interoperability on purpose.

Re: The new Dropbox

#464

Post by dflock »

wwweston wrote: post #219
sethhochberg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The limit on number of syncing devices has me exploring other options - I'm an oldschool Dropbox user, I got most of my storage space with referrals years ago, and I consume about 6GB on the free plan. I don't need 2TB. I don't really even want 2TB, and I'm certainly not going to pay over $100 a year for 2TB. I'd pay some smaller amount of money for the ability to sync additional devices without storage that I'll nev…

I don't need 2TB either, but I do need a cross-platform solution where the incentives of the company are aligned more or less with mine in providing the service. iCloud will always primarily be about Apple devices, which I like well enough and have several of, but maybe won't always. Microsoft's offering will probably be the same from the PC side of things. Google will offer me the world for free but data mine the he…

The dropbox linux client works, but it's not great.

It's recently stopped syncing for me because it now only supports ext4 filesystems, for some reason - and I currently have everything on btrfs.

Re: The new Dropbox

#465

Post by siproprio »

fudgy73 wrote: post #403
treve wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you're only using Mac devices though right?

iCloud for Windows was recently revamped after collaboration between Apple and Microsoft [0]. [0] - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283

Where did you get this info from? That link says nothing about a Microsoft and Apple collaboration.

Re: The new Dropbox

#466

Post by Shorel »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #386
brobdingnagians wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting a company and writing native clients. There isn't any reason not to. There are lots of cross-platform GUI libraries that are fine for business applications, you get native speed, there are plenty of languages that are both safe and fast. You get full access to the full power of the OS if you need it. I think the current craze of non-native clients is because of web-developers who don't know how to do any…

>There are lots of cross-platform GUI libraries In what sense is an app native if it uses cross-platform GUI libraries? Ahead of time compilation alone doesn't make an app native in my view.

wxWidgets uses the platform native controls and windows.

Re: The new Dropbox

#467

Post by maehwasu »

The fact that Dropbox has access to your files is a nightmare waiting to happen. Yes, I know they currently don’t use them for anything bad. No one ever does, until they do. I’m out.

Re: The new Dropbox

#468

Post by aloer »

Traster wrote: post #12

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 tool…

I agree. Looks like retreat to me.

Previously when they bought Mailbox or when they introduced Paper (which I never used...) I thought they are up to something exciting and innovative regarding how we work/do common workflows. Now it looks like they outsource the most important parts to others and accept being the glue in between. Integrations are just not that exciting

Re: The new Dropbox

#469

Post by shostack »

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…

Sidebar, since I suspect you were commenting more on consumer email services, but this sort of "moving up the food chain for owning customers and lock-in" has been happening for a while in the ESP (email service provider) space that companies use to manage their customer-facing emails.

For a bit now all the big email players have been getting acquired as part of some larger "marketing cloud" that attempts to fully integrate that as the hub for an audience platform that then ties in with other external touchpoints and such. One of the aims seems to be that owning the audience and performance data has inherent lock-in, and thus forced stickiness. Really interesting to see in context of recent BI tool acquisitions.

Re: The new Dropbox

#470

Post by TN1ck »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #344
diziet wrote: post #72

I do a lot of UI/UX design as a part of what I focus on, both at work and for fun. This page is a juxtaposition of well thought out elements and things that make me go `???`. Like: - Good product marketing messaging - Well done images and GIFs that get to the point - News-site like past first article scrolling, I bet it drives more engagement. I even like how the UI elements change color when you go to another articl…

This entire launch feels like what you've described. Things like these tool tips are absolutely killing me: https://cl.ly/365a42db2db9 It feels rough on the edges.

Oh wow, thanks for sharing that! Heavy animations are always tricky for productivity apps, as the increase in latency is bad for the day to day usage. This animation doesn't even look good and is just annoying after the third sight. For a productivity app, even a simple fade is sometimes too much. Really wonder how this could get approved.
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