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Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

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Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#361

Post by antihero »

ok_craig wrote: post #307
antihero wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they use Linux a lot internally, too? It's really awful that companies such as Box, Google etc are not supporting the Linux desktop, especially seeing as desktop linux is actually a really attractive option right now - better memory management than OSX and installable on pretty much any device, and Windows is pretty much a joke for non-.NET development or unless you game. Fuck, their Android platform is based o…

Not having a Drive client for Linux (yet) doesn't mean Google as a company does not support Linux at all. For example, Chrome is supported on Linux. We don't know - Drive for Linux may come further down the line. The reality is that a relatively small fraction of consumers use Linux at home or work. If I were releasing a new product, Linux wouldn't be one of my top priorities either.

It's a shame though, you think they'd support it.

Think of everything Linux has done for them.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#362

Post by glesica »

ok_craig wrote: post #307
antihero wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they use Linux a lot internally, too? It's really awful that companies such as Box, Google etc are not supporting the Linux desktop, especially seeing as desktop linux is actually a really attractive option right now - better memory management than OSX and installable on pretty much any device, and Windows is pretty much a joke for non-.NET development or unless you game. Fuck, their Android platform is based o…

Not having a Drive client for Linux (yet) doesn't mean Google as a company does not support Linux at all. For example, Chrome is supported on Linux. We don't know - Drive for Linux may come further down the line. The reality is that a relatively small fraction of consumers use Linux at home or work. If I were releasing a new product, Linux wouldn't be one of my top priorities either.

Agreed, but the "techie" crowd tend to be the early adopters for products like this and help drive others to use them. It's not totally crazy of Google not to support Linux out of the gate (for the reasons you and others noted) but it is a little surprising, nonetheless.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#363

Post by patrickk »

EvilTerran wrote: post #360
patrickk wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Linux support ... Headless (command line interface) Most normal (non-techie) users aren't going to care about these though. I can see the OCR being a big win among college students...scan in all your handwritten notes, and boom! they're all indexed and searchable and won't get lost before you need them for your final exam.

OCR doesn't mean handwriting recognition, though... handwriting's a heck of a lot harder than print.

I was wondering about that as I was typing...damn that would be cool to have.

If lots of people's handwriting was scanned in and used as a training dataset, that could be a way to do it on Google scale - like what they did with Google voice, training it for all different accents.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#364

Post by alberth »

Question...

Does the "GDrive for Businesses" not allow for a shared corporate folder?

https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.htm...

This seems odd because if you're a business, that would exactly be your need.

I hope I'm wrong, otherwise I'll continue to use my Dropbox for Teams.

https://www.dropbox.com/teams

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#365

Post by tomkarlo »

huhtenberg wrote: post #272
tomkarlo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention proper support for two-factor authentication, which most smaller email systems don't have (especially in-house corporate setups.) Shared services can devote more resources to security because they're splitting the result over a greater number of users.

RSA has been selling such systems for years. My friend's container shipping company of 15 people has it. It really comes down to having a qualified IT person on board, rather than the availability of a technical solution.

There's no question such solutions have been available, but the reality is that most companies haven't implemented them.

Even if a company is aware of TFA, it's still probably cheaper and faster to get it via Google's products than implement a solution in-house using RSA, etc.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#366

Post by bunnyhero »

bunnyhero wrote: post #212
MikeCapone wrote: post #183

Here's one thing that bugs me; Google Drive seems to constantly use between 2 and 3% of my CPU time. That's wasteful. If I was on a laptop, this would be battery time, and on my desktop, I want those cycles to be used for distributing computing science, not random background processes that aren't supposed to be doing anything when idle.

That sounds bad. Since I am primarily a laptop user, I am very picky about which online sync and backup services I use based on the resource usage of their desktop clients.

Follow-up anecdotal data: Drive app on my 1st-gen MacBook Air is using 2-4% CPU, even when "paused."

(For comparison, the Dropbox client uses 0 to 0.2% CPU when idling.)

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#368

Post by ajross »

icebraining wrote: post #352
ajross wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's an API for chrome apps. You couldn't write a linux-based sync client, or FUSE mount, etc... Basically Linux users have access to the ecosystem of online apps, but not access to the files in the native filesystem (one of the things that makes Dropbox such a killer app). Frustrating.

The API seems a simple RPC over HTTP. I don't see why you couldn't write a FUSE adapter based on it.

Yeah, reading further that might be the case. My initial scan said that the apps had to be present in the chrome market and approved. But the REST API looks like it just authenticates via OAuth and does the I/O directly by the client (FWIW: the OAuth authentication would be an annoying step for a background FUSE daemon, but not insoluble). I don't know which is correct.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#369

Post by archivator »

patrickk wrote: post #356
rogerbinns wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also have list going the other - things Dropbox has that GDrive doesn't: * Linux support * Headless (command line interface) * Public bug tracking and feature requests (votebox) Unsure about these * Shared folders I'm struggling to come up with more.

" Linux support ... Headless (command line interface) Most normal (non-techie) users aren't going to care about these though. I can see the OCR being a big win among college students...scan in all your handwritten notes, and boom! they're all indexed and searchable and won't get lost before you need them for your final exam.

Yes, well, that was Evernote's promise, too. Doesn't quite work unless you write in this extremely separated neat handwriting that no one taking notes could possibly be writing in :) Cursive (the way most people outside the States write) is straight out.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#370

Post by pmr_ »

icebraining wrote: post #339
rogerbinns wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also have list going the other - things Dropbox has that GDrive doesn't: * Linux support * Headless (command line interface) * Public bug tracking and feature requests (votebox) Unsure about these * Shared folders I'm struggling to come up with more.

If the API allows, I give it a week tops for the first two to appear on Github.

Google currently isn't winning the price for cool APIs. There is still nothing decent for G+. Are there any news on how an API for Drive is supposed to look like?
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