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Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

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Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#51

Post by sieabah »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #24
sylens wrote: post #7

I was a very early Dropbox adopter but eventually switched to OneDrive a few years back because they bundled Office 365 with 1 TB of storage. I just went and looked at the official Dropbox plans to see if there was a family plan similar to the 5 users I get with Office 365/OneDrive...and found their plan/pricing page overwhelming. There's rows upon rows of features to compare across versions like "Traffic and Insight…

Dropbox always feels like it peaked early and has steadily gotten worse as they try to add more and more features to it. > I feel like they are missing the mark when it comes to marketing to consumers here. I get the impression they're relying on name recognition and first mover advantage to keep the simple users flowing in, while all of the extra features and GUI fluff are built out to attract some other audience th…

I feel like they stopped being relevant when their scavenger hunts ended.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#52

Post by NiekvdMaas »

mastrsushi wrote: post #49

What about this client is M1 specific?

Maestral provides a universal binary on macOS, so it runs natively on arm64. The official Dropbox client is x64-only, so it needs to run in an emulation layer (Rosetta) on a M1. For something low-level as a file syncing service, that's very unfortunate. There are loads of request on the Dropbox forum to support arm64, but no sight of it being added anytime soon.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#53

Post by PaywallBuster »

stirlo wrote: post #35
lancesells wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has the same kind of gap with iCloud.

This is one of the most frustrating things about being invested in the Apple ecosystem. I've hit the 200gb limit and I'll be damned if I'll pay 330% more for storage that I don't need. Instead I'm deleting my oldest photos from iCloud and moving them over to OneDrive.

Backblaze?

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#54

Post by arthurcolle »

refulgentis wrote: post #11
arthurcolle wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imagine using Dropbox with those storage requirements...

The "imagine $X" construct has colloquially grown to mean "$X is irrational", which is strange to me here - the lack of binary diffing means if you change a single bit of your video editing project, the whole thing gets synced to the cloud. Dropbox is a common solution for small business VCS that's not VCS, I've seen it used for born exactly that way a half dozen times the past decade.

I just think that Dropbox is an inappropriate file storage mechanism (especially for heavy artifacts being generated locally) for someone moving that much stuff in and out of a long term storage system, especially at those levels. I'm not someone that generates 500GB of CAD artifacts a day, or anything even remotely similar, but I ingest about 15GB of global market data and news a day and I laughed a little bit reading your response (I understand how you were responding to GP, and your response makes sense) because its just nonsensical to use consumer focused products for anything serious.

Just because I slap on a "business tier" sticker on a water bottle doesn't mean the water bottle is better equipped at solving enterprise needs.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#55

Post by mastrsushi »

NiekvdMaas wrote: post #52
mastrsushi wrote: post #49

What about this client is M1 specific?

Maestral provides a universal binary on macOS, so it runs natively on arm64. The official Dropbox client is x64-only, so it needs to run in an emulation layer (Rosetta) on a M1. For something low-level as a file syncing service, that's very unfortunate. There are loads of request on the Dropbox forum to support arm64, but no sight of it being added anytime soon.

That either reads “we don’t have the resources to support our second largest OS platform” or there are too little users still using the native desktop client.

Mind you, this is a company that went out of their way to port a Linux client in 2011.

To see them hesitate with m1 is shocking

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#56

Post by smilespray »

Salgat wrote: post #28
asaddhamani wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 2500 employees. Why does a single product company with a product that is mostly “done” need those many people?

This horrible obsession with exponential growth. It's not enough to maintain a core team of engineers and pass on those savings on the price in order to gain more customers.

I completely agree with your sentiment, but it puts the company in a difficult position when your competition offers similar functionality for "free" (because you already paid for Office or their primary revenue model is different).

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#57

Post by OnlyLys »

codecutter wrote: post #41
sylens wrote: post #7

I was a very early Dropbox adopter but eventually switched to OneDrive a few years back because they bundled Office 365 with 1 TB of storage. I just went and looked at the official Dropbox plans to see if there was a family plan similar to the 5 users I get with Office 365/OneDrive...and found their plan/pricing page overwhelming. There's rows upon rows of features to compare across versions like "Traffic and Insight…

I left Dropbox when they stopped supporting Linux client. I didn't want to go to either Google or Microsoft, so I went with Mega.nz and I am very happy with them. I pay around $30/year for 400 GB storage. (most likely a grandfathered plan, not sure of current pricing).

> I left Dropbox when they stopped supporting Linux client.

Wait a second. Did they? My Dropbox client is currently working on my Arch system.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#58

Post by gumby »

sylens wrote: post #7

I was a very early Dropbox adopter but eventually switched to OneDrive a few years back because they bundled Office 365 with 1 TB of storage. I just went and looked at the official Dropbox plans to see if there was a family plan similar to the 5 users I get with Office 365/OneDrive...and found their plan/pricing page overwhelming. There's rows upon rows of features to compare across versions like "Traffic and Insight…

Are you on windows? Because I tried OneDrive and found it quite slow and a bit flakey when I tried it a few years ago on my Mac: it would get confused about sync state and just stop syncing (much better than losing data!) until I exited and restarted the app.

Also it would silently refuse to sync some files which eventually I realised were not valid windows filenames though they were perfectly fine under Unix.

Has it gotten better? It’s free so I’d be willing to use it if I could trust it.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#59

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #24
sylens wrote: post #7

I was a very early Dropbox adopter but eventually switched to OneDrive a few years back because they bundled Office 365 with 1 TB of storage. I just went and looked at the official Dropbox plans to see if there was a family plan similar to the 5 users I get with Office 365/OneDrive...and found their plan/pricing page overwhelming. There's rows upon rows of features to compare across versions like "Traffic and Insight…

Dropbox always feels like it peaked early and has steadily gotten worse as they try to add more and more features to it. > I feel like they are missing the mark when it comes to marketing to consumers here. I get the impression they're relying on name recognition and first mover advantage to keep the simple users flowing in, while all of the extra features and GUI fluff are built out to attract some other audience th…

In my impression, they are removing useful features and adding unnecessary ones.

Since I joined over a decade ago, they have removed an extremely useful Public folder with the capability to generate direct links, limited the number of devices, and added a ton of features I never wanted from them, like Paper.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#60

Post by boundlessdreamz »

firecall wrote: post #50
Spooky23 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make a lot of changes, the Dropbox sync works. Google drive or OneDrive choke in a variety of situations. The product sucks in lots of other ways.

Indeed! Google forced the new Google Drive client on me... On my M1 Mac it crashes constantly and the Finder pops up Google Drive disconnect dialogues constantly. Two days into finally relenting and giving the update from Backup & Sync to the new Drive client another try, it's still churning through my files! It may never finish at this rate it constantly crashes! Google Drive on M1 macOS is bad. Really bad. :-/

Hmm..The original backup & sync was a resource hog on my M1 but the new Google Drive client is pretty resource efficient.
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