It's so strange that a company designed around syncing files created the .paper format which only stores a URL, and no actual content. It could have been a great Markdown client.
Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
61–70 of 125 posts
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#62The 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…
Dropbox saw that the only B2C path for a company like them was to become Box, and they did not like it. Also, we kept criticizing Dropbox for moving away from a "folder that syncs".
I agree with a folder that syncs. Today I use dropbox, but I do my best to avoid interacting with it, because just clicking on the menubar icon makes me upset that no feature there is what I actually need. No sensible ignore rules, etc.
But I could have been wrong and focusing on dropbox was not the only path. But even if it wasn't, they fumbled every promising product they could. I mean, Mailbox, they pioneered (read acquired) the email swipe UX, then killed it.
Then there was that launch where they hyped some iCloud sync service that would allow apps to store settings and game states, etc. Whatever happened to that?
Today I'm so afraid that dropbox's more daring products will die faster than Google can retire theirs, that I simply do not use it for anything other than a folder than syncs where I can share links. And now that I think about it, it's been a while since I had to share a single link, so maybe I can just move to synching.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#63So 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.
On the other hand, they are adding tons of invisible yet useful features like auto OCR on PDFs, auto-transcription of audio files, a much better search, etc. It's not suitable to store anything that sensitive, but for regular stuff, they are becoming a powerhouse, and the web app allows you to work very efficiently and fast. I personally like Dropbox, and don't find the direction they're heading ill-advised.
That is far afield what I'd consider appropriate use of my data. I'll be discontinuing my very old subscription.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#64I'm continually impressed that Dropbox continues to exist, so long after their primary product offering was so thoroughly sherlocked by the big two B2C companies (Google and Apple) and the big two B2B companies (MS and Google). Especially because I've never worked anywhere that used Dropbox, so they don't have the long-tail life support legacy B2B money keeping them afloat like say, Lotus Notes did.
B2C was lost to them the minute Google Drive and iCloud Drive both got decent enough. Clearly with all their random acquisitions and stuff they were trying to become a #3 to MS and Google for corporate, but it's such a moat to penetrate, since they'd have to become at least a little better than at least one of them at most of the big productivity things (email, calendar, documents & drive, chat, meetings), or be a lot better at one specific thing, enough that businesses will have an appetite to keep paying for GOOG/MS's bundles and add-on additional cost to pay for Dropbox too. If I had to vote for a company least likely to succeed I'd pick Dropbox, and that's without any shade to the people running it. They're just in a terrible market position.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#65Earlier 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?
Lower the price below Google Drive and be better at being Google Drive than Google is. It wouldn't be that hard. You wouldn't need to be more expensive if you weren't pissing money away on acquisitions no one wants all the time.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#66The 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…
Dropbox saw that the only B2C path for a company like them was to become Box, and they did not like it. Also, we kept criticizing Dropbox for moving away from a "folder that syncs". I agree with a folder that syncs. Today I use dropbox, but I do my best to avoid interacting with it, because just clicking on the menubar icon makes me upset that no feature there is what I actually need. No sensible ignore rules, etc. B…
> only B2C path for a company like them was to become Box
What does this mean? I used Box once in about 2011 at work (before Google and MS got serious with their "Drive" features my company had paid for Box) and my impression was actually "this is like if Dropbox were built by Oracle" -- worse than Dropbox in every way, both usability and performance, but with some corporate-tailored features. As a consumer, I would never have dreamed of switching to Box.
So that's why I'm curious what you mean by the comment with respect to B2C.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#67It's so strange that a company designed around syncing files created the .paper format which only stores a URL, and no actual content. It could have been a great Markdown client.
Guess they didn't want any customers thinking they could ever safely stop paying their subscription because "I have all my .paper files safe on my computer"
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#68Good. I wish they'd stop adding new "apps" I don't want, and focus on being a handy little file sync and sharing solution. Some of my own pet peeves they did:
- got rid of Public folder support, in spite of user outcry (https://www.dropboxforum.com/discussions/101001014/ending-su...)
- re-wrote the software in such a way that files are temporarily locked right after they get written / modified (intermittently breaking utilities like VSO Image Resizer)
- made it increasingly difficult or impossible to deliberately remove the green checkmark overlay icons (used to be an easy Windows registry hack, now the software goes through all kinds of hoops to fight you and restore the way they want it)
- IIRC for a while they introduced AI feature default settings that would hoover up your document contents without consent (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropb...)
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#69Dropbox is example of a bad company. Why Dropbox doesn’t offer features adjacent to sync, like: end to end encryption for consumers, backup solutions like backblaze, S3-like buckets, controls like with S3 (like those related to IAM), tools to monitor folders and see analytics, flexible storage plans, equivalent of the Firefox/Bitwarden send, equivalent of services like ProtonDrive, and stop locking down ordinary feat…
Not only that, but also for a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
They won't last.
Re: Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
#70So 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.
> Incredibly, Vault was discontinued by automatically turning PIN-protected folders into regular unprotected ones!
Oh that's great! I currently use OneDrive because of Personal Vault (and other smaller reasons), because no one else offered something like it. I didn't even know about Vault, but I guess that's for the better because I wouldn't want the folder holding my ID etc. becoming accessible to every single app connected to my Dropbox.
There had to have been a better way to discontinue it. Even making the folder require migration on next access would've been better than silently worsening it.