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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#401

Post by bluedino »

jwr wrote: post #372
bluedino wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps you haven't looked? Try cloning a git repo, or unpacking a tarball with many files (doesn't matter if it's inside Dropbox or not) and observe the CPU usage of the Dropbox process. I checked right now and the Dropbox process on my machine has consumed a total of 39 minutes CPU time. That's 39 minutes of full-scale CPU usage. Even their "web helper" process (whatever that is) consumed two minutes and 41 seconds…

I don’t have a use case for cloning a git repo to Dropbox

Re: The new Dropbox

#402

Post by darkpuma »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #383
darkpuma wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symlinks in general suck on OSX. Try symlinking a file from an NFS mount onto your desktop and see if you get a thumbnail for it in Finder. In Finder, you won't. Now you might think, "well that's NFS, it's probably not thumbnailing those files because the latency exceeds some timeout." That's what I thought. However if you add that same directory containing such symlinks to your dock, you will see thumbnails for syml…

They suck on Windows, too. I've tried using junction points more than once to share a common library directory among several different projects, and have always ended up in makefile hell when some projects 'see' changes to files in the library directory while others don't. I can understand why Dropbox doesn't want any part of the dumpster fire that is symbolic linking. Maybe they work great on Linux, where they are a…

Yeah, when it comes to cross platform stuff I'm pretty forgiving with this sort of thing. Finder botching it sends me up a wall though. It's probably only a few lines of code at most to fix it, but Finder is closed source so I can't investigate it myself, let alone fix it, let alone send my fix upstream.

(And frankly I'm hesitant to even report it as a bug, since for all I know Apple will decide that NFS/symlinks getting thumbnailed in the dock preview is the real bug, and "fix" that leaving me worse off than before.)

Edit: Also sort-by-kind also fails in Finder when symlinks are involved. When "keep folders on top" is set, symlinks will still sometimes (but not always) appear above folders.

Re: The new Dropbox

#403

Post by fudgy73 »

treve wrote: post #393
pwthornton wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use iCloud. I switched a few years ago. It works really well. Unless you are using Dropbox with a team or a corporate environment, iCloud is better. I use a combo of iCloud (love the desktop syncing between my machines btw), and Google File Stream for team documents.

I assume you're only using Mac devices though right?

iCloud for Windows was recently revamped after collaboration between Apple and Microsoft [0].

[0] - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283

Re: The new Dropbox

#404

Post by robbiemitchell »

This isn't just about Dropbox. Notice the enhanced collaboration with Slack and Atlassian (which is already an equity holder in Slack).

This alliance looks like an attempt to displace Microsoft in owning the "office runtime". You have Microsoft's Teams, Office 365, and Github vs. Slack, Dropbox, and Jira.

The interesting thing is that Google is actually in a much better position to do this by way of GSuite, but their own internal messaging answer to Slack hasn't gotten out of pre-launch.

Re: The new Dropbox

#405

Post by zzzmarcus »

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 also been in the process of moving off both Dropbox and Google Backup & Sync because they are such resource hogs on the Mac. iCloud drive isn't perfect, especially when it comes to sharing, but I'll accept that if it means my fans aren't going to be on full blast when it's running.

I can't remember a time when I've had Dropbox open and not found it at the top of the CPU tab of Activity Monitor. This may be because I have a couple symlinks (not many, just some dotfiles) or because I have a large number of files (nothing ridiculous, ~100k photos backed up) but the fact is, it's been long enough for Dropbox to have figured this out and fixed it.

It's bad enough to where I now leave Dropbox off all the time, then only turn it on when I need to sync something. With iCloud sync I don't even think about it, which is the way it should be.

I opened Dropbox before starting this comment to see the new UI and even after giving it enough time to catch up, it' still using between 48 and 127% CPU. It makes even Outlook feel breezy.

Re: The new Dropbox

#406

Post by ImprovedSilence »

skinnymuch wrote: post #200
azinman2 wrote: post #170

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.

Where are you legally required to do that? What law is that?

I don’t think fiduciary duty is the right word for it. But there is some Supreme Court ruling (dodge bros. Vs Ford?) that seems to imply (or so people interpret) you need to make money for share holders.

Re: The new Dropbox

#407

Post by timdorr »

jxdxbx wrote: post #213

What a disaster. The entire initial premise of Dropbox was to sync files reliably. Then I can use real, native apps to edit them. The new Dropbox approach on the other hand inherently requires everything to be in the cloud--I already hate that, but even if I didn't, others already do this and do it better. I feel like Microsoft actually has the balance right. OneDrive still behaves just like a normal sync client. But…

The problem is, files are dying. 99% of the documents shared with me nowadays exist only in some cloud product. No one sends files anymore, it's all Google Docs links and such.

The only real place where files still live are with developers and designers. And even then, the move is away from locally-hosted content and stuff that only exists on someone else's server. VS Code remoting, Sketch Cloud, etc etc.

Dropbox is just fighting against the tide of the entire Internet. I don't disagree that it's disastrous, but what are they going to do? Their core product is going away. It's like being an oil company nowadays.

Re: The new Dropbox

#408

Post by rsync »

Syzygies wrote: post #289
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…

Yes, their symlink handling is absurd, and they have the usual sanctimonious defense when questioned about this. To be fair, most commercial cloud services overthink this, and also get it wrong. A symlink is just a file, like any other. It is a user's responsibility to insure that a symlink will work elsewhere; cloud services should just copy the file, just like any other. The users who expect a symlink to trick a cl…

"To be fair, most commercial cloud services overthink this, and also get it wrong."

  ssh user@rsync.net ls -asl some/dir
... looking good ...

"There's exactly one sync program that gets it all right: Unison, written by Benjamin Pierce"

  ssh user@rsync.net unison

  Usage: unison [options]
  or unison root1 root2 [options]
  or unison profilename [options]
(Ask about the HN readers' discount)

Re: The new Dropbox

#409

Post by nogridbag »

nogridbag wrote: post #320
kyrra wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

Too late to edit, but I just read the announcement about the changes to Drive and Photos which directly addresses my confusion.

https://www.blog.google/products/photos/simplifying-google-p...

Re: The new Dropbox

#410

Post by dudus »

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…

Oh no god forbid a company slightly change any of their offerings and add more features that will appeal to most of their audience. Then go around and try to advertise this on Hacker News, which we like to think is a community of visionary and entrepreneur geniuses but we really are a bunch of self-entitled and change averse edge case users that know better.

\s

Also, required "fuck Google" quote at the end.

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