What happened?
They screwed up a perfect piece of software.
More like competition, including open source solutions, has reached a point where Dropbox is becoming obsolete.
Dropbox CTO Resigns
31–40 of 133 posts
Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#32Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…
Dropbox uses very sophisticated binary diff nobody else provides to minimize inbound/outbound traffic; this has some CPU/battery cost though. Competitors usually provide very dumb upload/download that might be less CPU/battery intense but much heavier on the bytes transferred. You simply might not be their target group.
I genuinely don't know, but are you sure that others don't provide this?
Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#33Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…
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
In all seriousness, have you looked at OneDrive + Office365?
For $70/year you get 1 TB of storage, a client that works on all platforms, plus Microsoft Office 365 (online) and two licences for the desktop install of Microsoft Office plus the Office apps for iOS/Android. It's a great deal and works well.
Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#34Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…
Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using.
Over that same time period, they have gone from being a consumer product to an enterprise product, because the money in file sharing software is in enterprise. Slowness, battery use, complexity, none of these are as important to Dropbox nowadays as they used to be, because they are not as important for enterprise sales.
Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you genuinely think the Dropbox CTO resigned because of some complaints about an app dialog.
Not the OP, but 'app dialogs' and their utility/uselessness are symptomatic of the underlying philosophy and business culture which made them a 'requirement' - so if the app dialog is undesirable, it carries implications about the internal environment in which it was developed, which may prompt someone to leave. alternately: this was the person pushing the undesirable things, and other people pushed that person out a…
alternately: no relationship at all and this whole thread is just people dishing on their pet-peeves with the product.
Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#36Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#37Dropbox is still an insanely awesome product, and one of the few that I actually pay for and use on a daily basis -- it is a lifeline for my business!
I would have said the same thing in 2010 when I first started my business and needed file sharing/syncing in a small team. Everything just worked on Linux & Windows. Then they started tweaking everything, adding useless features, and it seems to be more of a hassle every year. But I'm still using it but if a cheaper, more lightweight service was offered, I'd probably switch.
Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#38Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…
Dropbox uses very sophisticated binary diff nobody else provides to minimize inbound/outbound traffic; this has some CPU/battery cost though. Competitors usually provide very dumb upload/download that might be less CPU/battery intense but much heavier on the bytes transferred. You simply might not be their target group.
Yeah, I don't think so. Their target group must be people with 10mb of files or less.
Why would you need to binary diff when syncing dropbox to a new computer? Yet setting up dropbox for the first time on a new machine uses 100% of my CPU. The same S3 sync operation is barely noticible.
When updating files, first check for changes with something ultra cheap like an md5 then, if changed, do the "sophisticated" stuff.
Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#39Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…
Dropbox uses very sophisticated binary diff nobody else provides to minimize inbound/outbound traffic; this has some CPU/battery cost though. Competitors usually provide very dumb upload/download that might be less CPU/battery intense but much heavier on the bytes transferred. You simply might not be their target group.
I very much doubt that Dropbox's target group are users with bandwidth limitations. Yes, it's nice to have features that minimize waste on the network link, but I'd bet far more people would trade that away in exchange for laptop battery life and a smaller hit on their CPU.
If they're only targeting that niche, then they have a business model problem. Make it an option ("Minimize bandwidth or battery usage?")
Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns
#40Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…
> once iCloud launches file sharing I'm 100% done with them. Do you mean something other than this? https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/share-files-with-ic...
Perhaps parent commenter meant folder-level sharing which is slated to be introduced in iOS13.x / macOS 10.15.x.