Live data from Hacker News

The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

311–320 of 590 posts

Re: The new Dropbox

#311
post #69

WTF is going on at Dropbox? Are they losing so many users they now need to make this ridiculous integrations?

Dropbox is valued at 9 BILLION dollars. With that valuation, they can't just be a file sync app, they are required to have some kind of "take over the world" roadmap.

Re: The new Dropbox

#312
I would have been excited if these were open integration points; instead it's just allowing you to connect your various walled gardens together :(

Re: The new Dropbox

#313

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…

I've used Dropbox since the beginning, and Nextcloud for the last few years. Nextcloud client seems to use %10 of the memory of Dropbox on my machines. I'm now in the process of switching to SyncThing. The advantage of Syncthing over Nextcloud, is you can used it centralized or decentralized (without a server), I dont need to manage SSL certs and I dont have to poke holes in my firewall. Syncthing client also uses very little memory (a bit more then Nextcloud, but hey Syncthing is both a client and a server). Each of these services have their own strengths, so it depends on the features you want.

Re: The new Dropbox

#314
post #45

I really love Dropbox Paper, so I get part of the collaboration story. What I don't like is that it's so hard to share a file, or to send an image in a chat -- all paths lead to dropbox links instead. When I get a Dropbox link on mobile chat now, I know it's going to take nearly a minute to see the content. Why?

What I really don't understand is, why I still cant put a dropbox paper document in a folder with my files on dropbox?

Re: The new Dropbox

#315
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My previous experience with Google Drive was that it would chew up CPU and memory a lot more than I liked. I've been pretty happy with iCloud Drive since I switched to it. Works seamlessly and effortlessly on my Mac and iPhone, affordable pricing fo storage which can be shared with family, and also solves my photo storage needs with Apple Photos. The only drawback is the lack of shared folders, but they just announce…

(I work for Google, not on drive. Opinions are my own). Have you tried the newer drive client? Backup & Sync[0] replaced the old client and I believe is a bit better than the older client. If you are on GSuite, there is the Drive File Stream[1] that is a lazy-load of resources from a drive folder (which is why it's targeted for businesses only). [0] https://www.google.com/drive/download/backup-and-sync/ [1] https://s…

It’s still terrible. Actually Google Drive (or Backup & Sync) client hasn’t improved one bit in the last 4 years. The only update we saw was “material design” revamp that was about it. It still spends 15 minutes “preparing for sync” every time I restart and consumes considerable CPU while doing that too.

Re: The new Dropbox

#316
Was going to use Dropbox pro as my photo handling solution but they don't support NFS!? I keep all of my photos on a NAS by my router. I'm sure there is some way around it but Flickr's auto uploader works fine with my NFS set up. This is related to the post I just made in the google photos post.

Re: The new Dropbox

#317
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock market doesn’t work that way. You are legally required to grow, forever until the end of time (or your business). I think it’s one of the most toxic forces that leads to pollution, over-consolidation, etc.

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

The first statement is true. The second sort of misses the point. "Fiduciary duty" isn't a moral obligation or a social norm, it's a darwinian thing.

Publicly traded companies are controlled by whoever wants to buy them. If a company has assets that could produce a profit of $N, but it's currently not doing so and only making $M (and its share price reflects the lower revenue), it will be in someone's interest to buy the company and rework its priorities so it makes them more money.

So... the grandparent was effectively right. Over time, all public entities will act to maximize profit.

Re: The new Dropbox

#318
Unlimited version history is still listed on my account. I recall this was grandfathered indefinitely for all existing users. Does anyone know how this fits with the new announcement?

I have only ever used it outside of 30 days, and the "yay! look what we are forcing on you at a large price increase" email is not especially welcome anyway.

Re: The new Dropbox

#319
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...

Maximizing shareholder value is not the same thing as perpetual growth.

Re: The new Dropbox

#320
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My previous experience with Google Drive was that it would chew up CPU and memory a lot more than I liked. I've been pretty happy with iCloud Drive since I switched to it. Works seamlessly and effortlessly on my Mac and iPhone, affordable pricing fo storage which can be shared with family, and also solves my photo storage needs with Apple Photos. The only drawback is the lack of shared folders, but they just announce…

(I work for Google, not on drive. Opinions are my own). Have you tried the newer drive client? Backup & Sync[0] replaced the old client and I believe is a bit better than the older client. If you are on GSuite, there is the Drive File Stream[1] that is a lazy-load of resources from a drive folder (which is why it's targeted for businesses only). [0] https://www.google.com/drive/download/backup-and-sync/ [1] https://s…

I posted above, but can elaborate in some more detail here.

I used the new Backup & Sync tool for the first time and had a poor experience.

Context: I have a paid MS OneDrive account but maxed out my storage and was seeking alternatives (specifically ones with easy family sharing). It turned out my wife was already paying for Google One so we just used that. I downloaded Backup & Sync just to transfer my photos from my local PC into Google Photos. Backup & Sync's UI is terribly sluggish on Windows. Clicking the system tray icon renders a blank dialog and then a second or two later the dialog is rendered (Surface Book 1). The UI responsiveness was a turnoff but not my primary concern.

In the sync tool and the Photos webapp preferences there are two checkboxes that affect syncing:

  * Backup & Sync client (upon upload to Drive copy photo to Google Photos)
  * Google Photos web app (automatically index Drive and copy images to Google Photos)
As an end user I liked the separation of Drive and Photos from the user experience. I do not want to upload photos to Drive and have them sync to Google Photos. And I definitely don't want Google Photos to index all images on my Drive account.

Simply using the Backup & Sync tool forces you to upload photos to Drive and have them sync over to Photos ruining that separation. And unfortunately in a case of bad timing there was some server outage on Google's end that affected the syncing of files from Drive to Photos. My photos successfully uploaded to Drive but did not appear in Google Photos web app, but no error is displayed to the user. I contacted Google One support and they informed me there was a problem they were aware of but also that I had to enable the latter checkbox in Photos webapp (have Google Photos index and parse all of my Drive images). I was incredibly hesitant to check that since I have a massive amount of images (not photos) in my Drive account (paper scans, tons of small icons, etc) and I don't want any of those appearing in Photos. I listened to support regardless, enabled that checkbox, and of course it did not work due to the server outage.

Post reply on HN