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Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

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Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#31

Post by Arnavion »

homebrewer wrote: post #21
privatelypublic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why rely on them at all? Dollar per GB they cost more than literally any other solution with file storage.

Years ago, their desktop client was the only one among popular similar services that supported proper delta sync while also covering all major platforms. Absolutely indispensable if you used it with things like TrueCrypt containers, where changing one byte within would cause most sync clients to resend the whole 50 GB, or however large it was. Dropbox handled this fine and would finish in a couple of seconds (actuall…

I do this with a WebDAV server (Fastmail Files) by breaking up my encrypted volume into 10MiB chunks, so that the sync has the granularity of that, plus a FUSE script to present the directory containing the chunks as a single block device for mounting. Obviously not cross-platform though.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#32

Post by ianstormtaylor »

Hovertruck wrote: post #28
ianstormtaylor wrote: post #18

The way Dropbox has mismanaged Paper over the past decade, and squandered so many opportunities in the productivity tools space, has been one of the most frustrating things to watch. Dropbox bought Hackpad and launched Dropbox Paper a decade ago! Paper was awesome at launch — so much less friction than Google Docs for teams back then — and had a good internal product team behind it, but leadership failed to see the p…

Yeah, Dropbox Paper remains the best pure writing experience I've ever used at work. I think Notion has a lot of nice features, but just writing in it still feels more cumbersome than Paper did a decade ago.

I completely agree. Paper was so frictionless that you could actually use it as a tool to think and sketch ideas with. Instead of Notion which feels clunky just to type in.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#33

Post by gkoberger »

plasticsoprano wrote: post #16
gkoberger wrote: post #5

What Dropbox has been doing to Paper has been so sad to me. I've been a daily user for almost a decade (and Hackpad before that), and their recent move into combining it into Dropbox itself has caused me to almost completely stop. I get what they're doing... unifying everything into one system. I get it. But I can't find any of my docs anymore. When I go to paper.dropbox.com, where there use to be thousands of docs,…

after they combined paper I got a new folder called Paper docs in my account which had all of my paper docs I'd normally see on paper.dropbox.com. Did you not get that folder?

I have it but most of my docs aren’t in it. They can only be accessed via direct link. The folder is also not accessible from paper.dropbox.com on mobile, which is more important now that the app is gone.

I wrote to support and they told me there’s nothing they can do.

(And even if the docs were in it… now I’m a few clicks away from my docs which is way worse than before.)

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#34

Post by derefr »

scarface_74 wrote: post #26
bayindirh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they provide nice features on top of basic file storage. If you use them, they justify the cost. If you don't need them, there's always pCloud.

With either Google or Microsoft, you get a complete office suite for the same price including storage

Right, and that's what Dropbox Paper was probably originally an attempt at working toward, from the opposite direction — "We have Google Drive, now we just need Google Docs."

It should be obvious that "a whole collaborative office suite" is not the kind of thing a regular company can build as an extension play... but somehow some manager inside Dropbox convinced them that direction was possible. At least for a while. Seems they've gradually come to their senses.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#35

Post by marton_s »

I’m a long time Dropbox user and had no idea what Paper is (it’s a collaborative document editing thing). I can’t recall ever seeing it as part of the Dropbox brand or anyone using it. I might have even been interested in using it… Is this just me or did they really fail to market this product big time?

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#36

Post by bayindirh »

scarface_74 wrote: post #26
bayindirh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they provide nice features on top of basic file storage. If you use them, they justify the cost. If you don't need them, there's always pCloud.

With either Google or Microsoft, you get a complete office suite for the same price including storage

For various reasons, I have all three of them. There are some missing things in Google and Microsoft's offerings. Namely:

1. App integration (3rd parties can access to a single folder in your Dropbox, allowing "purchase to Dropbox" directly. Many merchants automatically update the files if they receive updates, too.

2. Auto OCR, incl. handwriting. My old comics which are not English are OCRd, and I can do full-text search inside them, which is very useful for me.

3. Fast, auto transcription in many languages. I needed a transcription of a file recently. All services needed memberships, etc. I did it from Google cloud API toolbox. However when I uploaded the the same file to Dropbox, I saw a transcription button. It produced equally good results in way less time.

4. Send-a-copy (aka Transfer). I don't want to share and try to remember to disable links. My Dropbox membership contains a complete "WeTransfer" replacement, and I use it a lot.

5. Request files. I open a link, people send in the files I need, then the "dropbox" closes automatically. I get notifications for uploads, too.

6. Funnily, a working Linux client.

...and possibly more I don't use or can't remember right now.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#37

Post by varenc »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #18

The way Dropbox has mismanaged Paper over the past decade, and squandered so many opportunities in the productivity tools space, has been one of the most frustrating things to watch. Dropbox bought Hackpad and launched Dropbox Paper a decade ago! Paper was awesome at launch — so much less friction than Google Docs for teams back then — and had a good internal product team behind it, but leadership failed to see the p…

RIP Paper

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#38

Post by a0123 »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #18

The way Dropbox has mismanaged Paper over the past decade, and squandered so many opportunities in the productivity tools space, has been one of the most frustrating things to watch. Dropbox bought Hackpad and launched Dropbox Paper a decade ago! Paper was awesome at launch — so much less friction than Google Docs for teams back then — and had a good internal product team behind it, but leadership failed to see the p…

Here is the thing: Dropbox has no business being anything other than a cloud storage solution. Stop trying to do everything, it's too difficult and too expensive. Find what you're great at, and just improve it little by little. Stop adding shit.

Never, ever used any additional Dropbox services. All I need it to do is be a reliable cloud storage. Nothing else.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#40

Post by a0123 »

privatelypublic wrote: post #8
rjh29 wrote: post #4

So far this year they've discontinued Paper (app), Passwords, Send and Track, Vault and Capture. Incredibly, Vault was discontinued by automatically turning PIN-protected folders into regular unprotected ones! Would be stupid to rely on them for anything other than basic file storage at this point.

Why rely on them at all? Dollar per GB they cost more than literally any other solution with file storage.

The only cloud storage that has a decent Linux client is Dropbox.

Koofr is a decent cloud solution. Their client is horrendous across all platforms and lacks the most basic functionalities.

You can argue OneDrive / GoogleDrive are semi decent if you also use insync, which adds another license to purchase when a basic client should come free with the service you've already bought.

And no, rsync doesn't come even close to it in terms of functionality/simplicity, no matter how much hardened Linux users who haven't been outside since 1988 are trying to convince everyone otherwise.

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