I for one am very happy if this marks the start of the downfall of the mobile app. They were a neat concept but ruined by the gatekeepers, and the web has evolved to the point where most are unnecessary.
Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
51–60 of 125 posts
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Dropbox has one key advantage.
Block based syncing.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why rely on them at all? Dollar per GB they cost more than literally any other solution with file storage.
Years ago, their desktop client was the only one among popular similar services that supported proper delta sync while also covering all major platforms. Absolutely indispensable if you used it with things like TrueCrypt containers, where changing one byte within would cause most sync clients to resend the whole 50 GB, or however large it was. Dropbox handled this fine and would finish in a couple of seconds (actuall…
AFAIK that's still their USP.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#54The 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.
I have tried several times - real genuine multi-week efforts - but I'm with you. It never worked for me. I can see potential in there but it's just too much, for too little in return.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#55I am a big fan of dropbox and pay for their premium subscription, but I am sometimes a bit confused as to the direction they are taking. They still have the best sync engine and conceptual simplicity in my opinion, but since "File Request", none of their features have been useful for me, and mostly seem to have made the app more bloated. I am also sad at them shutting down the photo features, which I used. I would lo…
If you’re open to third-party sync clients, Maestral supports this:
https://maestral.app/docs/mignore
I’ve been loving Maestral so far, it’s just the syncing, none of the other stuff. It has some downsides (it can’t upload symlinks but it can download them, and it doesn’t have LAN sync) but it’s super lightweight.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#56The 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.
You have no business telling anyone what their business is. Dropbox has "business" doing whatever they want to try to make great products, achieve their mission and turn over some cash.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Dropbox has one key advantage. Block based syncing.
Okay, but let's say Google implements that. Than Dropbox is toast, right?
It's such a shame, because I absolutely believe that simpler products which focus on one thing and do it well are basically always a better user experience (and I personally try to use them wherever possible). But I think the business case is hard.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#58First password, now paper, what's going on at Dropbox?
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#59I always liked the file syncing part of Dropbox, and was considering their Family plan a few years back, until they increased the prices. If I remember correctly, their reasoning included all the additional features like Paper which you would get but that I never needed. It's currently at 203 EUR/year here - pretty steep if you only care about the core usecase of syncing files.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#60So far this year they've discontinued Paper (app), Passwords, Send and Track, Vault and Capture. Incredibly, Vault was discontinued by automatically turning PIN-protected folders into regular unprotected ones! Would be stupid to rely on them for anything other than basic file storage at this point.
> Would be stupid to rely on them for anything other than basic file storage at this point. Ironically I stopped using Dropbox when they started trying to branch out into all the other stuff. I doubt I'll go back at this point though.
I stopped using Dropbox when they started limiting free accounts to three devices and I suddenly got a lot of confused and irritated messages from all the people I'd evangelized into using Dropbox.