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

The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 590 posts

Re: The new Dropbox

#321

Post by chipotle_coyote »

hbosch wrote: post #295
vvoyer wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After receiving an email like: > This is all for just $20.88 more a year 1. I never asked for anything more 2. you still charge me for more at a higher price I just bought 2TB data on iCloud, moving everything there. Now I will have good photo application with face recognition which is awesome. Do not expect any move from Dropbox to make your personal life better, they won't. They are going towards enterprise custome…

> Use iCloud that's it if you're in the apple word. Does iCloud automatically save versions yet? One of the default features, IMO, of the Dropbox/Box/WorkDocs/OneDrive world is that a history of saved versions is easily accessible for a single document. Last I checked, iCloud didn't have this one feature.

I think this may be something that needs to be exposed at the application level, e.g., iWork's "Browse All Versions" feature:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205411

I see this in other apps as well; I just checked iA Writer, for instance, and it shows me versions on iOS. (And, of course, if you have Time Machine enabled on your Mac, you can browse versions for everything on that system, but I don't know how that interacts with iCloud: I suspect it's doing local versioning of your cloud drive!)

Re: The new Dropbox

#322

Post by eropple »

Legogris wrote: post #297
eropple wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like KBFS a lot, but you have to be careful about trying to use it as a Dropbox-alike. KBFS is always-online. If you have no network connectivity, you have no files. It's also not particularly fast.

They have been working on this and you can actually do it today even if it's not very well documented (again, haven't tried myself): $ keybase fs sync --help NAME: keybase fs sync - Manages the per-folder syncing state USAGE: keybase fs sync [arguments...] COMMANDS: enable syncs the given folder to local storage, for offline access disable Stops syncing the given folder to local storage show shows the sync configurat…

Interesting - I haven't seen this before. Thanks, that's awesome.

Re: The new Dropbox

#323

Post by jammygit »

jonotime wrote: post #313
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…

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 ve…

I had a lousy experience setting syncthing up for the first time, but then a really pleasant experience using it. I would recommend it as a decent sync option

Re: The new Dropbox

#324

Post by brandon272 »

I remember the feeling I had when I first used Dropbox - I was excited. The app itself was so unobtrusive and managed to sync my files fast and reliably. It seemed crazy not to use it because there was so little compromise involved.

Fast forward to today, years later, where I don't have any syncing solution enabled on my computer. And not because I don't want or need syncing - but because all of the current offerings, including Dropbox, are either bloated or have performance issues or lack reliability.

Dropbox chose a path and it is what it is. Maybe this strategy is working for them in with respect to revenue growth, and that's great for them, but when I'm here without a syncing solution that I would gladly pay for, it seems like an opportunity is being missed somewhere.

Re: The new Dropbox

#325

Post by jammygit »

octorian wrote: post #238
atonse wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

For reasons I cannot fathom, it seems like bigger companies are far less likely to justify the resources to build multi-platform native software than smaller ones.

My experience disagrees. I have a bunch of electron apps installed that single dev companies wrote

Re: The new Dropbox

#326

Post by bretpiatt »

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…

When you say 'support symlinks' what behavior would you expect the service to have with them?

I run a company with sync software, we treat them same as any other file so if you have one in a folder set to sync, we sync it, we don't follow the link and sync the linked file (as the link could go outside of the configured sync folder).

Re: The new Dropbox

#327

Post by mundu_wa_hinya »

They lost me when they nuked xfs support (which was working beautifully). I can't rework my nas FS which has TBs of data just to get Dropbox. I'm just waiting for my yearly subscription to expire...

Re: The new Dropbox

#328

Post by bad_user »

Traster wrote: post #12

I strongly feel this is a bad direction for Dropbox. Many companies have tried to integrate tools together. It's always half-baked simply because those tools aren't designed to be integrated. I find it kind of odd Dropbox would be bragging about a dropdown menu to create a Google doc. Surely if that's important to me I get Google drive - the integration will be better because the same company makes the different tool…

I use Google Docs / Sheets both at work and for some personal stuff.

I would never use Google Drive because it's a piece of shit. Whenever I used it I ended up with data being corrupted and this happened for both the standard Backup and Sync and the new Drive File Stream. Files being corrupted or missing is the worst scenario possible for a file sync service. Not to mention it's really, really slow and inefficient.

I keep using Dropbox because it's the only one that works.

Also I don't get what the point of the Google Docs integration is, but who knows, I might end up using it.

Re: The new Dropbox

#329

Post by thekyle »

azinman2 wrote: post #170
djsumdog wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

As I understand it, corporations are not legally required to "grow, forever until the end of time", they are required to act in the interest of shareholders. Typically, that means returning value to shareholders of the company.

Growing the company is one way to achieve that. Other ways include paying out a share of the profit the company is making via a dividend or using share buybacks to reduce the number of outstanding shares.

There are plenty of examples of companies doing all of the above on various public exchanges. For example, utility companies often don't grow very much (if at all) but they do have consistent cash flow which they pay out as dividends.

Re: The new Dropbox

#330

Post by felipelemos »

mvexel wrote: post #282
pgm8705 wrote: post #229

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…

After reading some of the comments here I decided to give the Google Backup & Sync client another go on my MacBook Pro. The CPU fan has been blowing at full speed for the last 15 minutes. It's still terrible, extremely resource-hungry and slow.

My perception is that this happens every time the app starts. After it scans everything the CPU/MEM/IO consumption goes down to reasonable levels.
Post reply on HN