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Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

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Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#41

Post by steviedotboston »

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…

I loved the original hackpad. I used it for personal task management at a time when I was really struggling to keep on task at a job.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#42

Post by doctorpangloss »

a0123 wrote: post #38
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.

Okay… but then Google Drive is cheaper and has all these other features, so I switched to it, and stopped paying Dropbox, so I guess you’re wrong?

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#43

Post by aurareturn »

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…

Side note: Why do people like Notion? I just can't get into it. It feels like every time I type, some autocomplete thing pops up and stops my typing. I just went back to the good old Notes app.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#44

Post by bayindirh »

pempem wrote: post #27
bayindirh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, they are adding tons of invisible yet useful features like auto OCR on PDFs, auto-transcription of audio files, a much better search, etc. It's not suitable to store anything that sensitive, but for regular stuff, they are becoming a powerhouse, and the web app allows you to work very efficiently and fast. I personally like Dropbox, and don't find the direction they're heading ill-advised.

The direction is great. The communication and customer support leave a lot to be desired. The thing is, its hard to have a product thats important to you and does cool things but also you don't rely on for anything crucial. Esp when its file storage.

> you don't rely on for anything crucial. Esp when its file storage.

Crucial and sensitive are different things. I trust them with the files I actively and regularly use, but I don't trust them with anything that needs encryption, which is a tiny sliver of what I have in terms of files.

Keeping things backed up is an entirely different conversation, though.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#45

Post by echelon »

aurareturn wrote: post #43
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…

Side note: Why do people like Notion? I just can't get into it. It feels like every time I type, some autocomplete thing pops up and stops my typing. I just went back to the good old Notes app.

Notion feels like Python transpiled to React, brought to you by the Atlassian Jira team.

I do not enjoy it at all, and I hope Obsidian eats their lunch.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#46

Post by drdrey »

aurareturn wrote: post #43
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…

Side note: Why do people like Notion? I just can't get into it. It feels like every time I type, some autocomplete thing pops up and stops my typing. I just went back to the good old Notes app.

Easy sharing, easy to make pages public, good syntax highlighting, decent search.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#47

Post by aborsy »

Dropbox is example of a bad company.

Why Dropbox doesn’t offer features adjacent to sync, like: end to end encryption for consumers, backup solutions like backblaze, S3-like buckets, controls like with S3 (like those related to IAM), tools to monitor folders and see analytics, flexible storage plans, equivalent of the Firefox/Bitwarden send, equivalent of services like ProtonDrive, and stop locking down ordinary features behind additional payment wall (even in paid plans, like using your available storage with more than one user for security and for defining scope for each device). My Dropbox Plus $120/year offers a fraction of what my managed nextcloud provides.

If you pay Dropbox 10$/month, you can’t set a damn password or expiry date to the file that you share. You have to pay even more for this simple feature.

Their password manager is limited to 50 passwords in their free plan. What these people are thinking?

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#48

Post by hibikir »

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…

Stripe used to live and dir internally off of hackpad with some custom search engine attached to it. It was all binned after the Atlassianfication, but I don't think many devs saw the move away as positive.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#49

Post by cosmic_cheese »

aurareturn wrote: post #43
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…

Side note: Why do people like Notion? I just can't get into it. It feels like every time I type, some autocomplete thing pops up and stops my typing. I just went back to the good old Notes app.

Edit mode by default is what makes Notion grating for me. Way too easy to unintentionally modify org docs. It badly needs an edit mode toggle button.

Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation

#50

Post by petetnt »

Dropbox Paper was the best Notepad-like app in the market, only to Dropbox to completely stop developing it almost immediately and then eventually making it worse by making it Dropbox-backed and now killing the app. It's a shame really.
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