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Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

arstechnica.com

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Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#131

Post by m11r »

fortran77 wrote: post #62
bbmario wrote: post #27

Guess I'm moving to rclone and S3.

> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 )

That comment was written in 2007 when the original suggestion would have been somewhat more acceptable. In 2019, please do not use plaintext FTP for anything at all if you can help it, especially for a setup involving personal documents or other data you care about keeping private. Every single syncing solution worth anything today, open or proprietary – including Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Syncthing, et al. – uses TLS or another strong form of transport encryption, and that should also be the absolute minimum bar for anything self-hosted, too.

There are many other better ways of building a Dropbox-like system on Linux these days than that advice, including the aforementioned Syncthing[1], but the appropriate update to that comment alone would be "getting a SSH account, mounting it locally with sshfs[2], and then using Git on the mounted filesystem".

[1]: https://syncthing.net

[2]: https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#132

Post by jpindar »

0_gravitas wrote: post #103
jcranberry wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the users perspective git is an application which you use to actively maintain a repo. Whereas Dropbox is more or less just a magic folder. Entirely different levels of convenience.

I definitely understand why "normal" users wouldn't use an online repo (especially if they've never used git itself), but I can't really buy `git add ., git commit -m "sync", git push -u` being too inconvenient, especially when you can just alias all of those. Now if mobile phones are the main reason I can definately understand a bit more, but I do my best to minimize my usage of it anyway, it's mainly a messenger +…

I use github - for code. But dumping 100 Gigs of movies, music, books, and other random personal stuff there is not its intended use.

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#133

Post by maire »

bhouston wrote: post #40
CPLX wrote: post #3

This seems like a good time to resurface the worlds best Quora answer, by Michael Wolfe. Answering “Why is Dropbox more popular than other tools with similar functionality?”: Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do: There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync. They built that. Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea. "B…

> "But," you may ask, "so much more you could do! What about task management, calendaring, customized dashboards, virtual white boarding. More than just folders and files!" > > No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder that syncs. This argument is a good one but it only covers the rise of Dropbox. We are now in a different era. Dropbox's functionality is now table stakes and not somet…

Every time I get a new OS upgrade with even more iCloud functionality I question why I still have Dropbox. Luckily for Dropbox they don't charge much so I don't cancel. I don't move new data to dropbox any more and I would never sign up for it today.

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#134

Post by pandalicious »

dunnevens wrote: post #86
criddell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs may have been right when he said something to the effect of Dropbox isn't a product, it's a feature . If all you want is a folder that syncs, then don't we get that from every commercial operating system?

I think there’s a strong case to be made for companies that do one thing and do it extremely well. A feature can be cut. It can be abandoned. It can be the thing no one wants to work with because it gets the reputation of being the department where careers go to die. Whereas a feature as product means it’s more likely to stick around. They have nothing to do but build and maintain this feature. They have the luxury o…

Spotify vs Google Play Music is the perfect showcase for this. They both get the job done but Spotify is better in so many small ways. Meanwhile, instead of being improved, GPM is in the process of being abandoned for the new shiny thing, Youtube Music.

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#135

Post by nonbirithm »

bhouston wrote: post #40
CPLX wrote: post #3

This seems like a good time to resurface the worlds best Quora answer, by Michael Wolfe. Answering “Why is Dropbox more popular than other tools with similar functionality?”: Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do: There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync. They built that. Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea. "B…

> "But," you may ask, "so much more you could do! What about task management, calendaring, customized dashboards, virtual white boarding. More than just folders and files!" > > No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder that syncs. This argument is a good one but it only covers the rise of Dropbox. We are now in a different era. Dropbox's functionality is now table stakes and not somet…

> Maybe a return to simplicity is it? But we moved away from the simple solution because it wasn't sufficent for our needs.

Or maybe the simple solution worked well enough but they still moved away because of some obligation to keep growing, which would be impractical without needing to add many more monetized features. When I see extensive rebrandings and additions of features that I would never have started using the service for in the beginning, I can't help but think this. In this case it doesn't help that the only useful feature of Dropbox is being integrated into all these other products either.

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#136

Post by Applejinx »

wukerplank wrote: post #63
criddell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs may have been right when he said something to the effect of Dropbox isn't a product, it's a feature . If all you want is a folder that syncs, then don't we get that from every commercial operating system?

If it's part of the OS, it's probably not cross-platform... I still use Dropbox because it runs everywhere: NAS, Windows, Mac and my phone. (At work we use Google Drive, it it just sucks. File Stream is super buggy and the web UI lacks a lot of productivity features.)

I stopped using it because I run an old computer on Mac 10.6.8 for development purposes, and I'd been using Dropbox as my communications protocol. It stopped supporting 10.6 and I stopped supporting it. Mind you, it'd been losing favor with me for changing the interface around and adding annoying stuff: the github desktop app has been doing similar things after being acquired by Microsoft, so I anticipate one day moving to full terminal git no matter how cumbersome that might be, just to get away from the 'helpfulness'.

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#137

Post by mbesto »

CPLX wrote: post #3

This seems like a good time to resurface the worlds best Quora answer, by Michael Wolfe. Answering “Why is Dropbox more popular than other tools with similar functionality?”: Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do: There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync. They built that. Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea. "B…

I've tested all of the major file sync tools and nothing compares to Dropbox's ability to simply sync files very well (merge conflicts, offline vs online, etc).

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#138

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

criddell wrote: post #41
CPLX wrote: post #3

This seems like a good time to resurface the worlds best Quora answer, by Michael Wolfe. Answering “Why is Dropbox more popular than other tools with similar functionality?”: Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do: There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync. They built that. Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea. "B…

Steve Jobs may have been right when he said something to the effect of Dropbox isn't a product, it's a feature . If all you want is a folder that syncs, then don't we get that from every commercial operating system?

You get a semi-walled garden from every commercial OS.

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#139

Post by JshWright »

jabl wrote: post #113

With recent changes like the 5 device limit (for the free edition), refusing to supporting any filesystem on Linux except ext4, and now this, I'm very happy with my decision to switch to syncthing.

Yeah, I dropped Dropbox when they dropped support for my file system.

Re: Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems

#140

Post by barrkel »

theamk wrote: post #99
speeder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What killed SBlaster was not motherboards having sound cards. It was movie studios convincing microsoft to ban from Windows the best featuresof SBlaster cards (those features are STILL banned by the way) because they were afraid of people using them to pirate movies. It is a reaaaaally long story, but to make it short: MS changed radically how windows drivers worked, and what a driver could do, during the transition…

I don't think this is the case. I remember seeing something about 3D sound in the card settings, thinking "that's not going to work with my 2.1 speaker system, must be just a useless gimmiky DSP" -- and never using it again. Most of my friends had the same experience. Later on, I got a new computer and a much better speakers, and spent some time getting digital output to work. I used my motherboard for that, because…

The 3D sound rendering with Thief back in the day was amazing. Positional audio. Then that tech seemed to just disappear for a decade.
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