Dropbox silently installed new file manager app on users’ systems • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by mrlala » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

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?

If OneDrive was as good as dropbox then yes it would be awesome. But it's not.. as I've written in other posts here, onedrive just cannot handle tons of files. When you get over like 50-100k it just shits the bed and can't handle anything.

So yeah for people that don't have much and just want to keep some data synced across some machines.. yup onedrive is great and there's no reason to use a third party service when you can just log into your windows with your live account and it's all synced. But if you've ever run into the problems with onedrive then it's a complete killer. You can't use a file syncing service that doesn't work perfectly all the time.

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

#212

Post by tmikaeld » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

whatever_dude wrote: post #61

I've been feeling the same as many people in this thread - DropBox keep adding all these weird features I don't want or need (document editor? file manager? notification this and that?) while not doing what I expected (better file masking for sharing, less resources). I've heard of pCloud and have been considering testing them since /I simply want a folder to sync/. Curious if anyone has tried it before and can compa…

I've been using pCloud for about 2 years and am very happy with it.

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

#213

Post by joshuamorton » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #152

bhouston wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google File Stream ( https://support.google.com/drive/answer/7329379?hl=en ) is the bomb - many TBs of files in it, can not even count how many and it is fast and adaptive. If you haven't tried it, you do not know what you are missing.

What's up with them? They now have three applications to do file syncing? Google Drive, Backup & Sync, and Drive File Stream? I've kept using Dropbox for all these years because they never confused people like this. There was a single app that gave you a folder that synced.

Just two, I think, the Drive applet was named Backup and Sync, while the Drive cloud-thing is still Drive. And DFS is a beefier, enterprisier, version of Backup and Sync.

I think?

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

#214

Post by Spivak » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #173

ChrisRR wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in a different era, but the issue is still the same. Lots of competitors have popped up in file syncing, but they all want to link in with additional services and other crap that people don't want. There's still a lot of value to be had in providing a folder that syncs quickly and effortlessly.

But is that value people will pay for? Clearly Dropbox doesn't think so.

This is 100% anecdata but it seems like among my friends, family, coworkers Google Drive has eaten Dropbox's lunch for casual file syncing and remote storage. I mean it used to be that everyone had a Dropbox account, it was basically synonymous with file storage, but now people talk about their "Drive".

"A folder that syncs" was never the killer feature, it was the ability to download and upload files from any machine connected to the internet and get sharing links.

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

#215

Post by dreamcompiler » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

hemancuso wrote: post #202

mad182 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expandrive has a really shit pricing/marketing. When I switched from Linux to Mac for a while some years ago, I felt the lack of easily mounting sftp as gnome does. So I found Expandrive did that very well. $39.95 seemed a bit steep for such a simple thing, but whatever, it was working great and I paid that. Few months later came out the next version and it turned out upgrades were not included, and now it's $49.95.…

We only email a couple times a year. And we definitely don’t silently update to a new major version. Ping support and link this thread and we can upgrade you free. Sorry for the trouble.

Glad to hear this. Dropbox is silently updating their app, and there's no way to turn this "feature" off. Yet another reason I'm looking to leave them.

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

#216

Post by dreamcompiler » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

Applejinx wrote: post #136

wukerplank wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mov…

Same here. I moved up to Mountain Lion about a year ago (yeah, I know, but I have good reasons for using old Apple operating systems) and then Dropbox stopped supporting Mountain Lion. Which does not mean that the product stops getting updated. It means THE PRODUCT STOPS WORKING. There was no good technical reason for this; it was just arbitrary Dropbox fuckery. Yet another reason I'm leaving.

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

#217

Post by dreamcompiler » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

hunter2_ wrote: post #81

gwbas1c wrote: post #59

I've worked for a major Dropbox competitor for almost a decade. Shenanigans like this don't surprise me. This happens because product managers, developers, designers, ect, like to get creative. They think that they need to invent something new; AND, we (in the industry) see how a certain group of users is constantly confused by the files and folders concept. Usually, cooler heads prevail and remind everyone why our c…

Can you expand slightly on the confusion, perhaps give a typical support question or similar?

I have a friend who is in his 70s who is otherwise quite competent but he cannot comprehend the fact that the Finder represents a tree. Some nodes (files and applications) are leaves; others (folders) are not. That's on him. The other thing he has trouble with is that Save and Open dialog boxes in applications present a different view of the tree than the Finder does. That's on Apple for not defaulting the Save and Open dialogs to the last window you opened in the Finder, and vice-versa.

The upshot is that he can never find anything on his computer, and if I'm not around he just drags everything to the desktop, because at least there he can find it.

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

#218

Post by sfotm » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

thirdsun wrote: post #155

While I’m not liking the direction Dropbox is taking I still haven’t found anything that rivals it as general purpose online storage and meets the following requirements: - can be used as cloud backup destination - I use Arq[0] to backup a huge music library close to 1TB in daily intervals to my Dropbox. I have never used Dropbox‘ official app. - since my music is located in a place of my , an external drive which mi…

If you were OK with S3, then I'd recommend backblaze. Very affordable object storage. I used rclone to back up my home server to it every night.

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

#219

Post by dreamcompiler » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

tadzik_ wrote: post #51

konart wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>3 machine limit to free tier >on my VPS Well, your VPS is not free I presume?

Dropbox's cheapest plan that I see on their website is €11.99. My VPS costs me $5 per month and runs Nextcloud with no arbitrary usage limits, as well as tons of other shit I need for different things. I assume it's the same for OP.

My VPS (Digital Ocean) gives me a whopping 25GB for $5/month. Are you saying you can get a TB or more of storage included with your VPS for $5? Please tell me where!

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

#220

Post by GordonS » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #137

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).

This surprises me. I tried Dropbox a few years ago and found it's conflict resolution, even with just 2 machines, to be shockingly bad - it was constantly notifying about conflicts, even when there really shouldn't have been one. Going from the Dropbox forums at the time, a lot of people were having similar issues.

The performance on Windows was also ridiculous - it literally rendered my PC useless for 1h on every boot. I poked around and discovered that the Dropbox client was basically some Python scripts that enumerated and hashed every.single.file on startup, then used an unreliable Windows API to check for realtime changes after that - how a company the size of Dropbox thinks that is a good idea truely boggles the mind! NTFS change journal? File system minifilter driver? Nah, let's hash every file on startup and use a the easiest realtime change detection available, just to ensure we miss some changes - oh, and we'll do it all in Python, just to make sure performance is as bad as possible!

Anyway, the final straw was when it deleted a lot of data because of a "conflict". At the time, the restore mechanism was terrible if you wanted to restore more than a handful of files - you basically had to restore files one-by-one, paging through hundreds of pages of files (I don't know if it's still like that). There was also some data that was permanently gone.

Dropbox support was also a joke - you had to post on a public forum and hope they replied. And if they did reply, they always shut you down with "no, Dropbox wouldn't delete your files", "no, Dropbox wouldn't raise a conflict for that" or whatever. Again, I don't know if it's still like that, but it really left a sour taste in my mouth, and coupled with the comedy Windows client, I won't be touching it ever again.

I ended up building my own solution using Seafile, using Azure blob storage as a backend. I run Seafile and Minio in Docker containers on a cheap Azure VM, and the whole thing "just worked" from the get-go - it's much easier than it sounds. Haven't looked back since!