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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#451

Post by iak8god »

vvoyer wrote: post #235
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…

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…

> 1. I never asked for anything more 2. you still charge me for more at a higher price

They were going to raise their rates anyway, this is just an attempt to make it look like you're getting something more in exchange.

Re: The new Dropbox

#452

Post by MrPea »

s1mon wrote: post #183
giancarlostoro wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also possible with Sharepoint from Microsoft, but you can open them all up in the desktop versions of those apps which I prefer.

Kinda sorta. Yes the MS applications are more powerful, but the collaboration tools still are not as real-time as Google. My work was forced to switch from Google to MS, so I have years of experience with both. People often have to reopen files to see other people’s edits or there’s a huge lag that we never had with Google. We’re in SF, CA with a fast fiber connection. There’s also not exact parity between the deskto…

What's amazing is that Google has had this functionality for a little under a decade. No other company matches the real-time editing still

Re: The new Dropbox

#453

Post by c256 »

agumonkey wrote: post #258
jwr wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. I can't put too many files in Dropbox, and additionally it burns power even if files are changed outside. In general, it is a CPU catastrophe, a penalty I have to pay in order to use file synchronization. I really hope that a better competitor appears. Additionally, the software pesters me with annoying popups pushing me to upgrade.

dropbox, considering their size, is really in a position for a solid rewrite. ocaml ? http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2014/06/06/python-to-ocaml-ret... nim ? rust ? go ?

DropBox is the Electron client of file sharing. They could make native apps that use native apis and get vastly better performance in time, power, cpu, and probably memory — but then they’d have to create and maintain a bunch of native apps. I know it’s common to hear HN comments like “they have the money/skill/opportunity to trade up to a better platform for more effort”, but everything I’ve seen says that it’s much harder to make that choice than to stick with the tech-debt you already have.

Note: I’m not saying it’s literally an electron client. It’s an analogy. :)

Re: The new Dropbox

#454

Post by jhurwitz »

eridius wrote: post #390
agumonkey wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they do rust ? fun

They use Rust in the datacenter. The layer that actually writes bits to disk is written in Rust. I don't know why they haven't yet deployed a native desktop client that's a Rust core with a thin platform-native GUI wrapper.

Jamie Turner from Dropbox gave a talk at a Rust meetup in 2017: https://air.mozilla.org/rust-meetup-may-2017/

Edit: at 30:05 in that video, he briefly talks about a forthcoming (as of 2017) "full redesign + rewrite of Dropbox's 'sync engine' in Rust." He claims it will use 10x less memory, and be 50x faster on key operations.

Re: The new Dropbox

#455

Post by bonestamp2 »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #405
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 becau…

Might not be right for everyone, and it's certainly not the best thing for this, but it's cheeeeap and practical... I use AWS S3 for sending files to others. Basically no file size limits, and you just pay for what you actually use, which is typically less than a few bucks/month for me.

Re: The new Dropbox

#456

Post by TeMPOraL »

vishvananda wrote: post #411
bluedino wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

the parent mentions in parentheses that the dir doesn't have to be in dropbox because it appears to monitor all files.

Sounds broken on user end. Never seen anything like this when using Dropbox on several versions of Windows and Ubuntu, on both low-end and high-end machines.

Re: The new Dropbox

#457

Post by agumonkey »

c256 wrote: post #453
agumonkey wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dropbox, considering their size, is really in a position for a solid rewrite. ocaml ? http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2014/06/06/python-to-ocaml-ret... nim ? rust ? go ?

DropBox is the Electron client of file sharing. They could make native apps that use native apis and get vastly better performance in time, power, cpu, and probably memory — but then they’d have to create and maintain a bunch of native apps. I know it’s common to hear HN comments like “they have the money/skill/opportunity to trade up to a better platform for more effort”, but everything I’ve seen says that it’s much…

I get it don't worry. Maybe they'll do it later when it will be an obvious advantage for the company.

Re: The new Dropbox

#458

Post by agumonkey »

jhurwitz wrote: post #454
eridius wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use Rust in the datacenter. The layer that actually writes bits to disk is written in Rust. I don't know why they haven't yet deployed a native desktop client that's a Rust core with a thin platform-native GUI wrapper.

Jamie Turner from Dropbox gave a talk at a Rust meetup in 2017: https://air.mozilla.org/rust-meetup-may-2017/ Edit: at 30:05 in that video, he briefly talks about a forthcoming (as of 2017) "full redesign + rewrite of Dropbox's 'sync engine' in Rust." He claims it will use 10x less memory, and be 50x faster on key operations.

Thanks for the link, missed it

Re: The new Dropbox

#459

Post by rbritton »

guruz wrote: post #358
Legogris wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered Keybase KBFS for this? You get 250 GB for free, public/private with not too much metadata getting leaked, FUSE for desktop and also access on mobile devices. I haven't actually moved over to this myself yet, but it does look much better than Dropbox or Sync.com (which I stupidly am still subscribed for despite their client being even worse than Dropbox - but at least it's encrypted...) Nextcloud m…

> Nextcloud mentioned previously is the obvious choice for the privacy-conscious, but does take some further responsibility to ensure integrity and availability. I'd recommend ownCloud over Nextcloud as Nextcloud doesn't have file checkumming during transfer.

Because it's web-based, I had huge difficulty getting ownCloud to sync web files like .htaccess. I ultimately abandoned the effort, and I don't know if that has improved any.

Re: The new Dropbox

#460

Post by runxel »

For a moment I was like "oh wait, there STILL alive?"

They just got worse and worse in the last years while being somewhat aggressive... "No, shut up!" I don't need no Business Dropbex, who the hell you think I am?

Also prices went up – but I can have 10TB locally for 250 bucks meanwhile.

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