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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#301

Post by thekyle »

y4mi wrote: post #256
liyanage wrote: post #203

I've been a Dropbox user for many years but I'm looking for a replacement. What drives me nuts and hasn't gotten better over the years is their truly awful Python-based macOS client software. It is constantly burning a ton of CPU/battery. It's always at or near the top of Activity Monitor's list in the Energy tab. It seems like their app constantly reacts to any file system activity, even if that activity is outside…

Resilio and folder sync are popular p2p options if you don't need a web interface

Also, Syncthing if you want something open-source.

Re: The new Dropbox

#302

Post by drstewart »

Dwolb wrote: post #61

SaaS needs to chill out for like two seconds. What we’re seeing here is a strategic maneuver by Dropbox to move up the UX stack from a single file syncing tool to a meta/coordination layer between SaaS products. The goal is to own the user experience and integrate all the adjacent or overlapping SaaS tools in a user’s workflow so you can control both the user and the suppliers. We’re going to see this more frequently…

>(i.e. what will email look like with this?).

Take a look at Front (a YC company I believe) for an example of a place trying to do this

Re: The new Dropbox

#303

Post by rchaud »

djsumdog wrote: post #157
ajross wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever happened to the philosophy of “do one thing and do it well”? Investor demands for growth. Dropbox already did one thing well. But they took money on the promise that they'd do more things and make more money than they could with that one thing they did well.

I wish more companies would take the Craigstlist model. There are very few posts they charge for and it's enough to keep the company totally doing. Even when Backpage was around to compete with them, they still were able to do that one thing well and keep going. The constant demand for growth is not a good thing. You can only sell so many eyePhones or Intel CPUs before people just would rather keep old things working…

Lots of companies have probably attempted to achieve Craigslist-levels of simplicity; we never hear about them because they have mostly ended up on the ash heap of failed businesses.

Craigslist won big early on because they took the personals and ads business away from broadsheet newspapers. That's pretty much it; they didn't try to go beyond that, and they're completely justified in not wanting to. Airbnb came in and pretty much took all of CL's short-term rentals business. CL is a small company and Craig Newsom (sp?) probably didn't even care.

He had the advantage of getting there first, and making a ton of money as a result. That is not the case today, so to expect newer companies to follow in CL's footsteps is unrealistic.

Re: The new Dropbox

#304

Post by paride5745 »

swalsh wrote: post #204

I used to run OpenSuse, when I installed it, I basically just went for the express install, which formatted my drive with xfs. I had dropbox setup, and one day a popup told me it was no longer supported. They decided my file system was not secure enough to store my own files. Their solution was I should repartition my drive using ext4. Then reinstall. That sounded like a bunch of work I didn't want to do, so I google…

Out of curiosity, what do you use now?

I just went full Linux and I am looking for a good Cloud storage for my docs and pics.

Re: The new Dropbox

#305

Post by acbart »

atonse wrote: post #209
liyanage wrote: post #203

I've been a Dropbox user for many years but I'm looking for a replacement. What drives me nuts and hasn't gotten better over the years is their truly awful Python-based macOS client software. It is constantly burning a ton of CPU/battery. It's always at or near the top of Activity Monitor's list in the Energy tab. It seems like their app constantly reacts to any file system activity, even if that activity is outside…

Is this really true? wow. I'm shocked that a company of Dropbox's size hasn't built native clients for each platform (or rearchitected the core to be based on something like Go or Rust that is fast and cross platform, and just building the UI parts in the native frameworks)

Well, they're probably a little biased towards using Python, since they have the former BDFL just lying around :)

Re: The new Dropbox

#306

Post by jwong_ »

saghm wrote: post #277
wazoox wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIgrating to NextCloud, I'm pretty happy with it. It has many extensions, plugins, and helper applications. Say no to centralized web :)

I've been hosting NextCloud on a $10/month Digital Ocean VPS for maybe 8-10 months now, and I've been super pleased with it. I'm not much of a devops person, but I found it fairly easy to set up and configure, and it runs smoothly enough that most of the time it's indistinguishable from using third-party cloud file sync service. I occasionally ssh in to apply updates (and renew the Let's Encrypt cert, since I've been…

How big is your sync folder? I have around 25GB I'd like to get off Dropbox.

Re: The new Dropbox

#307

Post by pkaye »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #54
microtonal wrote: post #11

Me and my wife ended both ended our Dropbox Plus subscriptions last weekend (after being paying users for five years or so). As a side-effect, my mom also cancelled her subscription (since she was using it to share photos with us). The primary reasons: - Constant nagging in the user interface to upgrade to Dropbox Pro or Dropbox Business. Don't want it, don't need it. - Accumulation of a lot of UI clutter over the ye…

I'm getting tired of their constantly dropping support for older versions of MacOS (I don't upgrade MacOS often because every new version is a net productivity hit for me), and their upgrader daemon that A. Cannot be shut off, and B. Upgrades my Dropbox client whether I want it to or not. Even with Google's very determined auto-upgrader, I finally figured out how to shut it off. Not Dropbox. Here we go again. Every c…

What is the Apple support life cycles for OS X? Last I remember it they didn't support much beyond the current version and previous.

Re: The new Dropbox

#308

Post by Slippery_John »

eyeball wrote: post #26

I just want my files backed up and sync’d across device. iCloud changes look promising. May be time to ditch Dropbox. If only Apple would have a good app on Linux and let me run Mac OS time machine into iCloud.

The lack of Time Machine backup into iCloud is just baffling to me. That 2TB package has lots of room for backup. If they're worried about eating too much into shared space then let me pay for a time machine partition.

Re: The new Dropbox

#309

Post by wutbrodo »

azinman2 wrote: post #222
dymk wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no legal requirement to grow. There is no "fiduciary duty", it's just unwitting HN folk pretending to be business savvy.

What do you mean that doesn’t exist? https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

I was going to point out that you're missing (or intentionally ignoring) the very next piece in that debate series[1] linked at the bottom of your link, which takes the view that this requirement doesn't exist. But it's not a very good-quality piece, which is presumably a function of the article format (short-form debate aimed at unsophisticated readers).

The flipside of that is that I don't think your original linked piece makes much of a case at all either.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

Re: The new Dropbox

#310

Post by bluedino »

jwr wrote: post #208
liyanage wrote: post #203

I've been a Dropbox user for many years but I'm looking for a replacement. What drives me nuts and hasn't gotten better over the years is their truly awful Python-based macOS client software. It is constantly burning a ton of CPU/battery. It's always at or near the top of Activity Monitor's list in the Energy tab. It seems like their app constantly reacts to any file system activity, even if that activity is outside…

Seconded. I can't put too many files in Dropbox, and additionally it burns power even if files are changed outside. In general, it is a CPU catastrophe, a penalty I have to pay in order to use file synchronization. I really hope that a better competitor appears. Additionally, the software pesters me with annoying popups pushing me to upgrade.

At what piont do you see issues? I'm on the free tier and only have about 3GB of files and have never noticed any CPU usages issues with Dropbox on my Mac
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