

David Pogue: Dropbox Will Simplify Your Life - donohoe
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/dropbox-will-simplify-your-life/?src=twr

======
rednaught
From the article...

"I realize that not everybody works on such elaborate file-shuttling projects.
But try Dropbox for its ability to keep your important files everywhere at
once. Or try it as an automatic, silent, encrypted backup of your essentials.
Or try it so that you can get at your computer’s files from your phone."

When will Dropbox implement client-side encryption? Dropbox is a pleasure to
use. Recommending Dropbox as a backup of certain documents is fine.
Recommending Dropbox as a backup for important/essential documents where
privacy is a concern is not ok.

~~~
AjithAntony
Dropbox is just a regular directory on disk. There is no magic. There just
happens to be a process watching that directory for changes. (or not. you can
always kill the dropbox process, and your files are still accessible)

Of course most users don't encrypt their local file systems in the first
place, so whether dropbox has something for local security is irrelevant.

For people interested in securing files on disk the same solutions you would
use without dropbox are the same ones you can use with dropbox. In a nutshell,
either encrypt your whole volume or mount a file-based volume.

Personally I use a Truecrypt volume, and I placed my drop box folder inside
it. I do this so I can still access all the files from the web and mobile and
have the versioning. Alternatively you could place the volume's data file
itself in the dropbox folder to be synced. You would of course lose the per
file granularity, but you do get a "snapshot" feature since you can restore
your whole volume with the versioning.

Keep in mind that if you place a trucecrypt volume inside drop box, then it
will only get synced when it is unmounted.

~~~
rednaught
Truecrypt is not an option for the majority of users. You've gone from a slick
user experience to one of..."Why not just keep things on my USB stick again?"

These are solved problems as evidenced by other providers like Spideroak and
Wuala where encryption happens by default on the client's device.

At the very least, Dropbox can offer this as an option. With the recent
funding, if they are planning to offer business plans...surely encryption will
be default there at least?

~~~
mistermann
A little more sophistication in their Selective Syncing would be nice as well.
And maybe some response to questions on the forums, at least for paying
customers.

I'm a paying customer, but I'm not a happy paying customer.

------
abbasmehdi
Dropbox is in PR heaven (and rightfully so). At this point all they have to do
is execute. Congrats to Drew, Arash, Ivan and the rest of the Dropbox team.
Not only is the product awesome and useful, the dudes are very smart and nice
as heck!

~~~
vidar
They probably paid good money for this.

~~~
vidar
Since this offhand comment seems to hit a nerve: My thinking was that there
has been a slate of pro-Dropbox stories (I am a happily paying user of their
service) which looked like it was carefully choreographed by a PR firm, no
doubt sparked by their fundraising.

That being said, saying that they paid him was a bit over the top and I hereby
retract that theory.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Paying off a reporter is very different then paying for good PR. Just read
what pg has to say: <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

Don't be so nieve as to think all this good press just happens, well all still
live by C.R.E.A.M. And it's not a bad thing, I love DB, but you can bet they
did, indeed, pay good money for this. Did they pay the reporter? no. Did they
pay for all this press? yes.

------
miles_matthias
David Pogue is a great tech journalist and I don't see him taking money from
Dropbox to write something positive.

I like this piece - Dropbox deserves all of the great PR it's getting. My
favorite Dropbox quote is Michael Wolfe's answer to this Quora question -
[http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-
tha...](http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-
programs-with-similar-functionality)

Also, just one note to David Pogue - be careful about giving the impression
that Dropbox solves "version hell." It's not a version control system - the
user still has to have their own version control system, like his editor did
by adding her initials to the file name.

~~~
AjithAntony
No, David was kinda right. Dropbox has built-in version tracking. Only 30days
of history is saved by default. Of course there are no commit messages, but it
happens any time the file is changed, and the web ui presents it in a pretty
clear way for non-techy users, by timestamp and author.

I think the specific version-hell he perceives is the where any member of the
team does not have the latest version. So in his case it is the auto sync that
scratches that itch, and not the explicit version tracking.

As for the "editor's initials" part. I think you might have misunderstood what
he meant. The editor did not make another copy with a new name, she just
renamed the file, as a signal to the team that her work was complete.
Alternatively she could have just communicated by some other means, and left
the filename in tact, but this is what they chose.

they sell a "packrat" feature with paid subscriptions for unlimited version
history

~~~
miles_matthias
Hmm interesting. Yea I knew what he meant with the initials thing, I didn't
know about the timestamp/author thing in the web app. Can users download old
versions?

------
phzbOx
What amaze me is how this same problem was solved years ago by programmers..
Hell, even dropbox used svn behind the scene. I remember when Dropbox was just
starting, some friends and me were talking about useless it was. "Duh, if I
want to host a svn server, I'll just host mine." ;)

It's also important to look at all the competitors dropbox had and currently
have.. and still, they're extremely successful. So, basically, they found a
nice problem to solve and _solve_ it. The goal there wasn't to be able to sync
all possible folders.. just one little folder where anyone would put their
stuff inside and that'd just _work_.

And, more importantly, it makes me thing about what tools we use every day
that the no-techy don't know about.

In my opinion, there's really something to do with the terminal. It's such a
crazy productivity boost and, if implemented correctly, might be way more
intuitive. For instance, everyone knows people that are scared by all the
buttons/windows/popup dialog/etc. For us, geeks, it's so easy.. we see the
screen and automatically abstract everything and focus on right part; but for
_them_ , it's impossible to abstract so many new things at once.

A terminal, _IA_ based, could make it so easy for no-geek to use a computer.
Obviously, I'm not talking about _BASH_ but something that could pretty much
understand beginners commands. I.e _send a email to bob_.. which could guide
the user through various questions.

Yeah, it's probably stupid. But hell, I'm sure they're hundreds of product as
useful as Dropbox.. we just have to think about it.

~~~
anigbrowl
Having started my computer career in the 1980s, I strongly disagree. If the
command line were all that, GUIs wouldn't have have taken off like a rocket in
the first place.

~~~
phzbOx
WHen you say you _strongly disagree_ ; I'd assume you mean about the command
line example. My point was more about how simple tools used every day by geeks
might be useful to no-techny if made simpler and more accessible.

And when I say terminal, I don't mean it in "bash" or unix prompt.. A total
new way to design it with a strong focus on simplicity and AI.

~~~
anigbrowl
It's been attempted, many many times. We ended up with some really good text
adventure parsers, but none that developed into productivity tools. If you do
want to pursue this line of thought, do some searching on Magnetic Scrolls'
approach to command parsing, I think a lot of that eventually got open-
sourced.

~~~
whatusername
That's a thought.. Isn't Siri really a command line with Text-to-Voice and
Voice-to-Text?

------
jessriedel
> You can also consider Dropbox a simple, automatic backup system. After all,
> anything that sits on multiple computers simultaneously is, by definition,
> backed up.

Well, it's a backup system, but the author's reasoning is wrong here, right?
If you make a mistaken change to a file (like deleting it) and don't notice it
before Dropbox is able to sync with your other computers, then all the copies
are changed. The _real_ backup lies on Dropbox's servers, where they store
previous versions, not your computer.

~~~
lancer383
Dropbox has built-in version control and undelete functionality:
<http://www.dropbox.com/help/11>

------
stumm
Why is dropbox suddenly getting a slew of coverage? Did this article get
written because got a big feature in Fortune? Did they just hire someone to
interact with the press?

~~~
bigwally
Most likely paid PR. Journalists are lazy and they already written articles.

~~~
Skillset
Somehow I doubt a public relations agent on Dropbox's payroll wrote up a piece
specifically from David Pogue's point of view, in the unique writing style of
David Pogue, so that David Pogue could simply submit it to the New York Times,
claim it as his own, and collect two paycheques.

I'm all for healthy skepticism, but not purely speculative conspiracy
theories.

------
dubya
Client-side encryption or a self-hosted version could be useful. I'm pretty
sure I'm violating a privacy law somewhere when I keep student grades in a
Dropbox folder.

------
ashrust
Agreed. Working on multiple machines and files not friendly to g docs, makes
dropbox indispensable. When I upgraded to Lion and iOS5, I didn't even think
about using iCloud. iTunes integration w/ iCloud may change that but I doubt
it.

------
rationalthug
I use TrueCrypt on my Dropbox volume, but it really would be nice to have an
integrated solution. Many non-technical users may not realize they care about
this, but they do.

~~~
rarrrrrr
FYI -- SpiderOak and Wuala do meaningful encryption natively.

(I cofounded SpiderOak in 2007)

~~~
anon_d
All these systems are doing it wrong. I don't want online backups, I want an
infinite, encrypted, online filesystem. I should be able to mount it and treat
it like any other hard disk. The local disk should just be used as a huge
cache. I can't find a service that does this. Why the hell not?

~~~
rationalthug
But it's unclear if this is what "everyone else" wants as well. The most
interesting group, I think, is not the mostly tech-illiterate who want to
store their garden pictures and videos in the cloud, nor the tech-elite who
are willing to trust online storage with large swaths of their lives and
businesses.

It's the group in between that is the most interesting to these companies
right now. Those who are relatively well informed about major technologies and
their uses. Do they really want to have their information mostly stored off-
site, or do they simply want larger and larger local storage mirrored by
online back-up for peace of mind and easy sharing?

I would guess that this is the largest (apparent)consumer market and one of
the reasons why this is where most of these companies have their focus right
now.

------
rakkhi
For his usecase (multiple people editing with automatic version control) pity
he didn't try Google docs which I think is better for this. No appending
initials to the file to indicate review completed, full tracking of changes
and indication of who did what. Office.live and few other similar services
also would have been better.

~~~
samstave
I would love to use google docs.

But it doesn't give complex formatting, you MUST have inet, you don't get a
native directory - with asymmetrical directory structures on multiple clients,
VISIO VISIO VISIO, all must have gmail... etc.etc.etc

Dropbox, for me, is the best tool I have for team collaboration.

We are an active and very early Same Page user (UX sucks ass) I've used
Atlassian, Groove and other collaboration tools.

Dropbox is hands down the most efficient - because it requires ZERO THINKING
on the part of ANY user.

They just edit files on their machine, shared directories between users are
auto-updated.

There is NOTHING to do on any end.

If you cant figure out how to manage directory structures across your team,
then you shouldn't be on a team.

------
rayhano
Especially if you plug in a service like 300milligrams: 300.mg

It basically gives you a stream of updates so you can track what is happening
across a whole host of platforms. One of the guys creating this was at YCNYC.

------
tiku
Wuala, so much better..

------
CPlatypus
This just makes me so sad. The author's work flow cries out for sharing, not
syncing, perhaps augmented by some sort of notification system. This is a
problem my filesystem colleagues should have solved years (decades?) ago.
Arguably they did so at a technical level, but the user and administrator
experiences were so horrific that people abandoned those solutions. Instead
they turned to things such as Dropbox and its (too) many imitators, which put
the right interface on top of the wrong solution instead of the other way
around. Now there's so much storage and bandwidth wasted storing copies
insecurely on services such as Dropbox, when it should be going directly
between users' systems with no middle man to pay for compromising security.
It's a business model that shouldn't even exist. What a waste.

------
zenobia
Meh...As other commenters have noted, Dropbox is not for anyone who values
their privacy. Your files are not secure from Dropbox staff snooping, and
they'll fink you off to the flimsiest government request to paw through your
stuff. I use Spideroak because they have true zero-knowledge encryption. Only
the account holder has the encryption key, and they cannot get into your
files. Of course this is sad for people who cannot track their passwords and
always need the vendor to look out for them. And Pogue's entire workflow is
goofy.

