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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#501

Post by giovannibajo1 »

kyrra wrote: post #243
pgm8705 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My previous experience with Google Drive was that it would chew up CPU and memory a lot more than I liked. I've been pretty happy with iCloud Drive since I switched to it. Works seamlessly and effortlessly on my Mac and iPhone, affordable pricing fo storage which can be shared with family, and also solves my photo storage needs with Apple Photos. The only drawback is the lack of shared folders, but they just announce…

(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…

As siblings say, it’s still terrible. I installed the business version on my Mac to give a look, I have zero files synced with it. After a few days I checked activity monitor and it had used tens of minutes of CPU time. For zero files and zero activity.

Re: The new Dropbox

#502

Post by malchow »

I pay Dropbox $199/yr and it's frustrating. I want to share files, photos, videos, and other items with individuals and small audiences all the time –– both for business and personal purposes.

But Dropbox is so convinced that it needs to be a social network or a workplace platform that I can no longer reliably share things with others. Dropbox sometimes forces a sign-in or a sign-up before the anonymous end user can view my shared file. Am I crazy, or is that just unacceptable?

Re: The new Dropbox

#503

Post by CriticalCathed »

Baeocystin wrote: post #419
Paul-ish wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hiding file systems is both en vogue and maddening for people who actually work with files. Which is everyone, even if they don't know it. The amount of assistance I've had to give even technically-competent users when it comes to even finding where the heck their data even is has skyrocketed over the past couple of years.

!!! I have experienced this. It's primarily people with shiny new macbooks who can't figure out where any of their files actually are even though they are constantly editing them!

Eventually there's going to be some serious blowback. You can't expect people to efficiently use their computers if they can't even find their godamn files!

Re: The new Dropbox

#504

Post by CriticalCathed »

Wait. Do people actually routinely use the dropbox web interface? I only ever go there to manage deletion and recovery of files; and that's maybe at most only been necessary a handful of times over the years.

I have used dropbox religiously, even on my phone, from the day it became available. It's a folder on my machine that I put things in to sync across devices.

Re: The new Dropbox

#505

Post by djsumdog »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #406
skinnymuch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Re: The new Dropbox

#506

Post by liyanage »

TkTech wrote: post #495
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of it is Pythons fault, how much is the way they designed it, and how much is the problem domain.

A well-written Python app using the respective platform's native events through say, watchdog[1] performs perfectly fine for huge numbers of files[t]. The language used isn't at all the problem with Dropbox's performance which has been a problem for as long as they've had a desktop app. If there's one specific bottleneck (ex: hashing files) then that's a prime candidate for Cython[2] or the plain CPython C-API. Even…

Agreed, and I'm a big Python fan myself, I didn't mean to bash the language.

Somewhere between cool MIT dorm room side project and serious company there is a point where it's time to ditch it and reimplement it in in something that performs better.

Another drawback of it being Python is that when it is causing the fans to spin, I can't inspect what's going on with Activity Monitor's sampler. It's all opaque nameless Python stack frames.

Re: The new Dropbox

#507

Post by Shorel »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #164
randlet wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been happy with pCloud which has Win/Linux/Mac/Android/iOS clients.

I pay for both and pCloud is cheap but inferior (for me) in two ways: 1. pCloud doesn't support file permissions or symlinks, thus you can't use it as a real filesystem (eg, building and testing software out of it). 2. pCould is a "cloud fs" (the files aren't on a host filesystem), whereas Dropbox is syncing a host filesystem. The difference is very visible in performance. If the first issue was fixed (I've asked the…

Number 2 pCloud way is to add sync folders, you do that from the Sync tab in the preferences dialog. Sadly the command line client doesn't let you add the sync folders. An alternative for the GUI is to edit the sqlite configuration file.

In my experience pCloud works fine for me having the Documents, Music and Pictures folders synced, and having many other folders as cloud only.

Re: The new Dropbox

#508

Post by Barrin92 »

T-hawk wrote: post #363
mbreese wrote: post #65

Whatever happened to the philosophy of “do one thing and do it well”? I use Slack and Zoom often, but I have never once thought — gee I really wish I could just open up this presentation in Dropbox directly into my Zoom meeting. I just don’t see the integration working in that direction. Sure, Dropbox should make sure that it’s available as a provider to save/open files for other programs — that make sense. The integ…

> Whatever happened to the philosophy of “do one thing and do it well”? This relies on composability, integrating together several such components into a coherent whole. Users don't understand composability or want to do it. They want the integration to already exist and just work.

to be fair not every developer likes it either. Not to start the traditional flamewar but I've always been a much bigger fan of emacs than of vim precisely because it gives me a powerful, integrated environment rather than a set of distinct tools.

You could also compare wechat to traditional isolated apps, and in my opinion well integrated platforms trump collections of tools almost always.

Re: The new Dropbox

#509

Post by mark_l_watson »

I really don’t like the $20/year price increase. I am used to costs for infrastructure decreasing.

I pay for Dropbox, SpiderOak, Google Drive, iCloud, and OneDrive. Now that I have mostly retired, I question needing so much redundancy. I feel like I have to purchase OneDrive because it is so inexpensive for the whole family and also getting Office apps thrown into the deal.

I like supporting SpiderOak even though I use it very lightly. I like supporting privacy oriented companies so I am sticking with them. Also, iCloud is very convenient and inexpensive - another keeper.

DropBox should offer more plans. Few people need two terabytes of data and it gives them an excuse to charge more.

Re: The new Dropbox

#510

Post by edhelas »

2019, UI showcase of a multi billion $ company is still done using multi mega-bytes GIF files. What was video compression technologies about already?
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