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Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

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Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#61

Post by mikevm »

cones688 wrote: post #45
jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox is terrible with CPU usage. This is something I reported to them several times, but it seems they don't really care. Last I tested, Dropbox consumed CPU for ANY changes ANYWHERE in your filesystem, not just within the Dropbox folder. So its (slow) code processed changes even when you untarred a large set of files somewhere in /tmp. I also stopped using Dropbox for storing my code because of that — it's nearly…

> Another problem with Dropbox is that upon login it indexes the entire Dropbox I haven't used Dropbox in a while as a local client for other reasons but I think people need to appreciate this is the payoff for having the convenience? How can one expect it to sync changes if it never scans or detects changes? People seem to want a magical product where it never uses any HD throughput or CPU to index/scan/upload megab…

My computer comes to a halt on boot because of the Dropbox client. I hate it. For some reason SugarSync does not do this kind of thing, so there has to be a way to do it in a smarter way.

Why can't Dropbox remember the state of the files in your dropbox folder, and upon login, grab state of the files on the Dropbox server and do a simple comparison, without re-calculating hashes for the files on your computer?

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#62

Post by duncan_bayne »

rickyc091 wrote: post #55
snom380 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have both. If you put your working directory in Dropbox you will have a copy of your uncommitted work as well. Also, in many cases it is easier for a graphic designer or just a customer to put stuff in a Dropbox folder that will sync to their website, than uploading stuff using a web form or learning to use git and X amount of deployment tools.

I'm part of the camp that uses both Dropbox / Git for my development work. I've actually had Dropbox save me a few times due to nasty rebases. For a lot of one off scripts, I don't really commit them into git so that's where it comes in handy. The extra redundancy doesn't hurt...

> The extra redundancy doesn't hurt...

... unless you're running on batteries.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#63

Post by fredoliveira »

SurfScore wrote: post #59
davedx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And to everyone that says you should not store code in dropbox: a) there are good and legitimate reasons for doing so I'm genuinely curious: why do this, as opposed to using a DVCS like git?

Dropbox revert to previous versions has saved my ass multiple times when something goes wrong in Xcode that I can't undo.

Xcode has built-in git support which you should use.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#64

Post by jwr »

davedx wrote: post #38
jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox is terrible with CPU usage. This is something I reported to them several times, but it seems they don't really care. Last I tested, Dropbox consumed CPU for ANY changes ANYWHERE in your filesystem, not just within the Dropbox folder. So its (slow) code processed changes even when you untarred a large set of files somewhere in /tmp. I also stopped using Dropbox for storing my code because of that — it's nearly…

> And to everyone that says you should not store code in dropbox: a) there are good and legitimate reasons for doing so I'm genuinely curious: why do this, as opposed to using a DVCS like git?

I do use git. But I often develop on two machines: a laptop and a Mac Pro. Which means I am often in the middle of something when I have to just pick up the laptop and go. "In the middle of something" means that just pushing commits over doesn't cut it. I can (and do) rsync stuff over, but that is annoying and very error-prone (it's too easy to sync stuff the other way around and lose work).

I guess you could say Dropbox gives me finer sync granularity than git does.

Dropbox seems like a perfect solution: have a single place where you keep code, develop on two machines, just pick up your laptop and leave whenever you want, without worrying about sync.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#65

Post by wslh »

jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox is terrible with CPU usage. This is something I reported to them several times, but it seems they don't really care. Last I tested, Dropbox consumed CPU for ANY changes ANYWHERE in your filesystem, not just within the Dropbox folder. So its (slow) code processed changes even when you untarred a large set of files somewhere in /tmp. I also stopped using Dropbox for storing my code because of that — it's nearly…

So, we need a per application battery usage indicator? Surely this application exists.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#66

Post by jwr »

cones688 wrote: post #45
jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox is terrible with CPU usage. This is something I reported to them several times, but it seems they don't really care. Last I tested, Dropbox consumed CPU for ANY changes ANYWHERE in your filesystem, not just within the Dropbox folder. So its (slow) code processed changes even when you untarred a large set of files somewhere in /tmp. I also stopped using Dropbox for storing my code because of that — it's nearly…

> Another problem with Dropbox is that upon login it indexes the entire Dropbox I haven't used Dropbox in a while as a local client for other reasons but I think people need to appreciate this is the payoff for having the convenience? How can one expect it to sync changes if it never scans or detects changes? People seem to want a magical product where it never uses any HD throughput or CPU to index/scan/upload megab…

I am not saying Dropbox sucks, I am just criticizing those aspects which I think could be improved and are being neglected.

From my conversations with Dropbox support I understood that Dropbox really can't handle a large number of small files. The large plans are intended for people who store large files, not lots of stuff.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#67

Post by nitrogen »

mikevm wrote: post #61
cones688 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another problem with Dropbox is that upon login it indexes the entire Dropbox I haven't used Dropbox in a while as a local client for other reasons but I think people need to appreciate this is the payoff for having the convenience? How can one expect it to sync changes if it never scans or detects changes? People seem to want a magical product where it never uses any HD throughput or CPU to index/scan/upload megab…

My computer comes to a halt on boot because of the Dropbox client. I hate it. For some reason SugarSync does not do this kind of thing, so there has to be a way to do it in a smarter way. Why can't Dropbox remember the state of the files in your dropbox folder, and upon login, grab state of the files on the Dropbox server and do a simple comparison, without re-calculating hashes for the files on your computer?

Your files may have changed between logins (multi-user system, multi-OS system, etc.).

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#68

Post by SurfScore »

fredoliveira wrote: post #63
SurfScore wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox revert to previous versions has saved my ass multiple times when something goes wrong in Xcode that I can't undo.

Xcode has built-in git support which you should use.

I'm talking weird glitches like a nib gets corrupted and I've made enough changes to matter but haven't committed anything yet

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#69

Post by columbo »

davedx wrote: post #38
jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox is terrible with CPU usage. This is something I reported to them several times, but it seems they don't really care. Last I tested, Dropbox consumed CPU for ANY changes ANYWHERE in your filesystem, not just within the Dropbox folder. So its (slow) code processed changes even when you untarred a large set of files somewhere in /tmp. I also stopped using Dropbox for storing my code because of that — it's nearly…

> And to everyone that says you should not store code in dropbox: a) there are good and legitimate reasons for doing so I'm genuinely curious: why do this, as opposed to using a DVCS like git?

I use dropbox as a client facing equivalent of FTP.

That way the client can have programmers/designers change their UI without needing any access into the server. It also allows me to share each site and doesn't bring the entire headache of managing accounts. I simply share the yoursite.com folder to the client. If a client has multiple sites it's just as easy to share all of them.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#70

Post by Terretta »

wslh wrote: post #65
jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox is terrible with CPU usage. This is something I reported to them several times, but it seems they don't really care. Last I tested, Dropbox consumed CPU for ANY changes ANYWHERE in your filesystem, not just within the Dropbox folder. So its (slow) code processed changes even when you untarred a large set of files somewhere in /tmp. I also stopped using Dropbox for storing my code because of that — it's nearly…

So, we need a per application battery usage indicator? Surely this application exists.

It's in beta, coming this fall: Mavericks.

The new battery indicator on the menu bar identifies apps that consume the most energy, and Activity Monitor now details energy consumption per process.

First in list of features: https://developer.apple.com/osx/whats-new/

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