Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 199 posts

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#181

Post by tim333 »

josteink wrote: post #12
overcast wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the actual issue with iCloud? It takes three seconds to turn it on, and select what I want to sync. Done. Backing up, syncing calendars, contacts, and notes to all my devices with zero problem.

> What's the actual issue with iCloud? I'll admit I haven't tried yet, but I'm going to hazard a guess that if I try to setup icloud on my Linux machines at home or my Android devices, I'm not going to get very far. With Dropbox I get all the way, everywhere, with no hassles. Thus Dropbox has my business.

> What's the actual issue with iCloud?

I'm not sure I can answer generally but from a personal point of view currently my notes are not syncing with my iPhone - God knows why - and last year when my iOS update f'kd up and I had to wipe the phone my iCloud backup wouldn't restore - some kind of corruption. Luckily there was a 3 month old iTunes backup on my disk so I didn't lose all data. So it's not perfect.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#182

Post by JabavuAdams »

zer0defex wrote: post #77
Spooky23 wrote: post #68

> Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year, and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease. Honest question: WTF are they doing?

Nail on the head right here. The only thing Dropbox has these days is consumer confidence in it's syncing process. Beyond that, they trail every competitor feature-wise and frankly, they are succeeding despite their management, not because of it. Recent product enhancements have been, let's be honest, mediocre at best across the board and show no signs of that changing anytime soon. They exist now solely due to brand…

Dropbox works better for me than Google Drive. That's quite surprising, since I'd expect Google to be good at sync. Maybe not consumer sync, I guess...

Also, I don't want any more features. Same with Evernote. I just want to keep notes, and it works quite well for that.

Too bad the investor pressure will likely make each of these products worse.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#183

Post by JabavuAdams »

unabst wrote: post #120
zer0defex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nail on the head right here. The only thing Dropbox has these days is consumer confidence in it's syncing process. Beyond that, they trail every competitor feature-wise and frankly, they are succeeding despite their management, not because of it. Recent product enhancements have been, let's be honest, mediocre at best across the board and show no signs of that changing anytime soon. They exist now solely due to brand…

I loved Dropbox for its simplicity, the fact that it has MIT in its genes, it not being Microsoft or Google, and for Carousel. But my dropbox was super slow in Japan, MS Office products keep spawning conflicting copies, Photoshop randomly pauses batch processing because of sync file locking, and they are shutting down Carousel. So I am moving to Google Drive. All the frustrations above are not unique to me. Dropbox e…

I've had ridiculous sync issues with Google Drive. Can't remember the details, but it had something to do with switching accounts and then having to re-download tens of gigs of data. Left my system in a confused state where it wouldn't sync any more. I had quit Dropbox, but went back to it.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#184

Post by natrius »

tamana wrote: post #169
saumil13 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why i like and dislike DBX (note: i'm completely on AAPL ecosystem in HW): + sync works better than any other out there + its quick in sync esp between other machines in same network + sharing folders and links is much easier than other including iCloud + developer adaptation is high on mobile apps which is turning out to be increasingly valuable last year or so - expensive and limitation of option plans - extremely…

You have two choices on privacy: encrypt at the client (that means no web sharing from random machines), or be vulnerable to spying.

You have a pocket computer that's really good at storing random bytes. Store a decryption key there, and get it into your random browser's memory via QR code or encoded mnemonic phrase. The UX is hard, but probably solvable.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#185

Post by tbyehl »

tamana wrote: post #169
saumil13 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why i like and dislike DBX (note: i'm completely on AAPL ecosystem in HW): + sync works better than any other out there + its quick in sync esp between other machines in same network + sharing folders and links is much easier than other including iCloud + developer adaptation is high on mobile apps which is turning out to be increasingly valuable last year or so - expensive and limitation of option plans - extremely…

You have two choices on privacy: encrypt at the client (that means no web sharing from random machines), or be vulnerable to spying.

| - expensive and limitation of option plans

This stopped me from becoming a paying customer for years. I had 20GB of free space from referrals and it's a big leap from not quite enough space for nothing to too much space for a $100/yr. I started using the free space from Google and Box for my overflow while waiting for Dropbox to offer a $50/yr plan... and I blinked first.

The Google and Box clients are serious contenders for dethroning iTunes as the worst software on my computer. Dropbox just friggin' works and I've never noticed it crash or have a negative impact on any computer I've put it on.

My first renewal is in four months. Maybe I'll find some time to give ownCloud a try before then... or maybe not.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#186

Post by devsquid »

unabst wrote: post #120
zer0defex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nail on the head right here. The only thing Dropbox has these days is consumer confidence in it's syncing process. Beyond that, they trail every competitor feature-wise and frankly, they are succeeding despite their management, not because of it. Recent product enhancements have been, let's be honest, mediocre at best across the board and show no signs of that changing anytime soon. They exist now solely due to brand…

I loved Dropbox for its simplicity, the fact that it has MIT in its genes, it not being Microsoft or Google, and for Carousel. But my dropbox was super slow in Japan, MS Office products keep spawning conflicting copies, Photoshop randomly pauses batch processing because of sync file locking, and they are shutting down Carousel. So I am moving to Google Drive. All the frustrations above are not unique to me. Dropbox e…

I feel your pain. I use both Drive and Dropbox. I think they have the two best cloud storage software, or at least the best from what I've used.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#187

Post by devsquid »

Spooky23 wrote: post #68

> Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year, and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease. Honest question: WTF are they doing?

Man I've meet some dropbox employees and talked about to them about their company. Its kinda frightening. The sheer amount of decadence makes me think the company won't last. It was shocking to listen to them and be around them. They acted like they were the kings of the world and spent like it too. I guess it wouldn't be a bubble if such behaviors weren't common place.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#188

Post by devsquid »

tamana wrote: post #168
unabst wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved Dropbox for its simplicity, the fact that it has MIT in its genes, it not being Microsoft or Google, and for Carousel. But my dropbox was super slow in Japan, MS Office products keep spawning conflicting copies, Photoshop randomly pauses batch processing because of sync file locking, and they are shutting down Carousel. So I am moving to Google Drive. All the frustrations above are not unique to me. Dropbox e…

The grass is greener... Report back on whether your new service is faster than DB.

For most users in the US, they won't see a difference in speed. However when I lived with 100down/up internet, there was a huge speed difference between Drive and DropBox. Drive was like 4x faster.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#189

Post by gedrap »

>>> Dropbox signed up 13 large companies with more than 1,000 users each

So let's say the average employee count is 2k and they negotiated to pay $100/user/year. 13 * 2000 * 100 = $2.6M. Even if we double the average employee count and assume they pay standard $150/yr, it's $7.8M.

Assuming that business offering is their strongest bet to get as strong as some investors might like (i.e. justify the valuation), how many of these do you need to justify $10B valuation? And how big is the market?

I am not sure that it all adds up.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#190

Post by juliendorra »

jl6 wrote: post #48
azinman2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for Dropbox, and their sync is the industry's best. They'll be here in 5. 10 is the bigger question mark when files go away.

Files will never go away.

But manual file management might. Dropbox is about creating folders and organizing file in there.
Post reply on HN