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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#441

Post by pfranz »

atonse wrote: post #283
Shorel wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone still build native clients for anything? It seems no one bothers anymore, no matter the size of the company. Any native clients we have now were built years ago and now they are only maintained. I think nowadays even Audacity would be an Electron app.

Yes, a company of dropbox's size definitely has an iOS team (not 1 iOS developer). They absolutely have the resources to do this. But I suppose you're right. Even true of Slack. It's totally a meme that Slack's electron client is horrendous and bloated, but it probably hasn't stopped their growth, so where's the incentive for them to improve it?

What sucks is that server-side performance is their problem, and client-side performance is your problem. It becomes their problem if growth slows or if users leave, but it's often too late.

Re: The new Dropbox

#442

Post by vinay427 »

blfr wrote: post #195
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…

if that's important to me I get Google drive - the integration will be better because the same company makes the different tools and you can actually stay within the eco-system. If Dropbox are planning to compete with this it's very difficult to see how they win over Google I agree with you completely, Google should have squashed Dropbox like a tiny, helpless bug that it is in comparison. Yet reality disagrees and th…

> Google can't even deliver a proper client for Google Drive on Linux which is a system many Googlers use. It all remains a mystery to me.

Despite it being promised at the launch of Google Drive, several years ago. I finally moved off of Drive to nextCloud as a result.

Re: The new Dropbox

#443

Post by andrei_says_ »

bad_user wrote: post #328
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…

I can see the integration as being useful in your not having to remember what service your files are on.

Re: The new Dropbox

#445

Post by hrktb »

Paul-ish wrote: post #412
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally what I value is just basic cloud storage with a decent automatic sync. That reminds me of a pretty famous Quora answer (here https://www.quora.com/Dropbox-product/Why-is-Dropbox-more-po... ) that described why Dropbox succeeded: > Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do: There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync. T…

That answer is 8 years old. Files seem to be disappearing from a large number of problem domains, in favor of webapps. That doesn't bode well for Dropbox if it is a trend that continues.

Interestingly enough, Dropbox is/was popular on iOS because of being the closest thing to a filesystem.

With iOS13 this also erodes, but going against the trend was beneficial for them up to this point.

Re: The new Dropbox

#447

Post by rdiddly »

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…

Ideally all these choices you mention would be configurable settings...

Re: The new Dropbox

#448

Post by mattnewport »

kevinmgranger wrote: post #438
mattnewport wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why are there no really good email clients?

Because email clients can only be as good as email itself, which isn't really good. ;)

I know you're being facetious but email clients fail to satisfy me primarily when it comes to search and organization, remaining performant when dealing with large archives of mail, good UI/UX and robustness / reliability. None of these are really problems inherent to email, though they are perhaps inherent to software.

Re: The new Dropbox

#449

Post by Avery3R »

usaar333 wrote: post #357
Syzygies wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are taking strong positions on what is right or wrong when there is no objective answer and tradeoffs both directions. > 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 cloud service into special behaviour (like syncing folders elsewhere) are also wrong. You no more want a cloud ser…

>symlinks to Windows (or at least WinXP since they didn't exist until Vista)

The version of NTFS in windows xp and the version of windows explorer both supported symlinks just fine. There was just no user-mode api to create them. You could use a kernel driver to make them, or even mount the disk offline and make them

Re: The new Dropbox

#450

Post by cmer »

pedroaraujo wrote: post #206
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…

Seafile is a wonderful Dropbox replacement: - https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ Open-source and all. :)

Seconded. Significantly better than Nextcloud for file syncing. Nextcloud syncs over Webdav which can be pretty painful.
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