
The new Dropbox - yarapavan
https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/product-tips/new-dropbox
======
liyanage
I've been a Dropbox user for many years but I'm looking for a replacement.
What drives me nuts and hasn't gotten better over the years is their truly
awful Python-based macOS client software.

It is constantly burning a ton of CPU/battery. It's always at or near the top
of Activity Monitor's list in the Energy tab. It seems like their app
constantly reacts to any file system activity, even if that activity is
outside the Dropbox directory. My file system is busy all day long from
building in Xcode and other things.

What I need is for Dropbox to improve that by making an efficient, battery-
saving, native macOS client. What I don't need is what is announced in this
post.

The two other things that I hate are the fact that they don't support symlinks
and that they use a kernel extension. All of these things together made me
start the search for a replacement.

Does anybody know how the CPU/power impact of Microsoft's and Google's
offerings are on the Mac?

~~~
vvoyer
After receiving an email like: > This is all for just $20.88 more a year

1\. I never asked for anything more 2. you still charge me for more at a
higher price

I just bought 2TB data on iCloud, moving everything there. Now I will have
good photo application with face recognition which is awesome. Do not expect
any move from Dropbox to make your personal life better, they won't. They are
going towards enterprise customers.

Use iCloud that's it if you're in the apple word.

~~~
0x906
I self-hosted a Nextcloud installation and used 2x 4TB drives. The first is
full dedicated to the Nextcloud use while the second is rsync-ed to the first
every night. Then I deleted my 8 years old Dropbox account. Currently my only
cloud provider is iCloud just for the photos, contacts, iwhatever backup.

~~~
ndarwincorn
Assuming the second drive is always connected to the machine & on, why are you
opting for that nightly sync vs. mirroring the two disks in raid1?

~~~
0x906
It's been a stupid decision at the time of the setup. Now its already there,
and any attempt to change it will have to erase the drives, and this is a huge
pain in the arse.

~~~
jlgaddis
You can "convert" a single HDD drive into a RAID1 (mirror) online, without
data loss or backup/restore.

------
Traster
I strongly feel this is a bad direction for Dropbox. Many companies have tried
to integrate tools together. It's always half-baked simply because those tools
aren't designed to be integrated. I find it kind of odd Dropbox would be
bragging about a dropdown menu to create a Google doc. Surely if that's
important to me I get Google drive - the integration will be better because
the same company makes the different tools and you can actually stay within
the eco-system. If Dropbox are planning to compete with this it's very
difficult to see how they win over Google.

The integration with Google makes sense because they already own the tools
that you're moving between. It seems really funky to have Dropbox crash that
party. If you're trying to integrate with tools outside of the Google eco-
system maybe dropbox atleast tries to allow it, I just can't see how it'd be
anything other than clunky though.

Personally what I value is just basic cloud storage with a decent automatic
sync. Obviously storage has turned into a commodity and dropbox are trying to
compete on a new level, it just seems boggling to me that this is the
direction they've taken.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> Personally what I value is just basic cloud storage with a decent automatic
> sync.

That reminds me of a pretty famous Quora answer (here
[https://www.quora.com/Dropbox-product/Why-is-Dropbox-more-
po...](https://www.quora.com/Dropbox-product/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-
other-programs-with-similar-functionality)) that described why Dropbox
succeeded:

> Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the
> ideal solution for it would do:

There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync.

They built that.

Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea.

"But," you may ask, "so much more you could do! What about task management,
calendaring, customized dashboards, virtual white boarding. More than just
folders and files!"

No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder
that syncs.

"But," you may say, "this is valuable data... certainly users will feel more
comfortable tying their data to Windows Live, Apple's MobileMe, or a name they
already know."

No, shut up. Not a single person on Earth wakes up in the morning worried
about deriving more value from their Windows Live login. People already trust
folders. And Dropbox looks just like a folder. One that syncs.

"But," you may say, "folders are so 1995. Why not leverage the full power of
the web? With HTML5 you can drag and drop files, you can build intergalactic
dashboards of statistics showing how much storage you are using, you can
publish your files as RSS feeds and tweets, and you can add your company
logo!"

No, shut up. Most of the world doesn't sit in front of their browser all day.
If they do, it is Internet Explorer 6 at work that they are not allowed to
upgrade. Browsers suck for these kinds of things. Their stuff is already in
folders. They just want a folder. That syncs.

That is what it does.

~~~
Paul-ish
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.

~~~
Baeocystin
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.

~~~
CriticalCathed
!!! 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!

------
jonstokes
Looks like Zawinski's Law is still 100% true:

“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which
cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.” Coined by Jamie Zawinski
(who called it the “Law of Software Envelopment”) to express his belief that
all truly useful programs experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and
application platforms (the mailer thing, he says, is just a side effect of
that). It is commonly cited, though with widely varying degrees of accuracy.

[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-
Law.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html)

~~~
mattnewport
So why are there no really good email clients?

~~~
kevinmgranger
Because email clients can only be as good as email itself, which isn't really
good. ;)

~~~
mattnewport
I know you're being facetious but email clients fail to satisfy me primarily
when it comes to search and organization, remaining performant when dealing
with large archives of mail, good UI/UX and robustness / reliability. None of
these are really problems inherent to email, though they are perhaps inherent
to software.

~~~
joshschreuder
I think the same problems appear in other domains with large libraries. Music
players have also been historically terrible with bad UI, slow searching and
many of the same issues you mentioned.

~~~
scifi6546
surprisingly I have found rhytmbox by the gnome devs to be pretty good. It
does what is supposed to very well and it works which is all I want out of a
digital music player.

------
mbreese
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 integration with MS Office
makes sense — where Office is aware when you’re working on files that are
stored in Dropbox.

This just seems like they are trying to do too much. I can’t see the
strategy...

~~~
thinkharderdev
They were losing ~$500m a year (and growing) doing one thing and doing it
well.

~~~
jacobcohen11
Maybe it's because they were expanding too much and hiring too many people

~~~
asdff
Who provides dropboxes actual storage? That provider could just keep squeezing
dropbox until the provider creates a copy of dropbox or has them bent over
just to the point of them switching to another provider. Maybe dropbox should
have been building their own data centers in the mean time, cutting their
overhead. That idea of restraining growth in favor of long term stability
probably wouldn't sit so well with the shareholders who want their pie
tomorrow.

~~~
karlding
I believe they have migrated most (if not all) of their storage off AWS to
their own infrastructure [0].

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/why-dropbox-decided-to-
dro...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/why-dropbox-decided-to-drop-aws-and-
build-its-own-infrastructure-and-network/)

------
Dwolb
SaaS needs to chill out for like two seconds.

What we’re seeing here is a strategic maneuver by Dropbox to move up the UX
stack from a single file syncing tool to a meta/coordination layer between
SaaS products. The goal is to own the user experience and integrate all the
adjacent or overlapping SaaS tools in a user’s workflow so you can control
both the user and the suppliers.

We’re going to see this more frequently and it’ll look weird coming from
different tools trying to level up and pull this off (i.e. what will email
look like with this?).

One issue is as incumbents partner/buddy-up and competition heats up, we’ll
see a bunch of bundling, increasing consumer costs while locking out
newcomers.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Agreed. The beauty of Dropbox used to be their utter invisibility. They just
seamlessly synced my files in the background. If they're now going to insist
on being "in my face," I'll take my business elsewhere. And whichever Dropbox
vice president tried to make his bones with this project can pound sand.

~~~
iscrewyou
Yeah. That was the attraction. It was invisible and got the job done.
Recently, the notifications about their new products inside Dropbox is simply
spammy.

------
danieldk
Me and my wife ended both ended our Dropbox Plus subscriptions last weekend
(after being paying users for five years or so). As a side-effect, my mom also
cancelled her subscription (since she was using it to share photos with us).

The primary reasons:

\- Constant nagging in the user interface to upgrade to Dropbox Pro or Dropbox
Business. Don't want it, don't need it.

\- Accumulation of a lot of UI clutter over the years. When you used to log
in, you just your files. Now you get suggestions, unread comments, or
whatever.

\- Dropping support for file systems outside ext4. One of my machines uses
Linux on ZFS, now I need to LD_PRELOAD shims to make Dropbox work. No, I am
not switching back to ext4 for you, Dropbox.

\- The camel that broke the straw's back: raising the prices from 10 to 12
Euro per month. It is not like we can't afford it. But storage and bandwidth
gets cheaper, but Dropbox gets more expensive. We do not need the new
features: why would I need 2TB if I am only using 200-300GB of space? And no,
I don't want Smart Sync, which puts itself in ring-0 through a kernel module.

If Dropbox had just stuck to its nice, clean, and simple interface, focusing
on syncing across machines with various OSes or file systems, we would still
be happy, paying users. They wouldn't have to add anything (though the File
Requests feature was nice). Just don't bother me with nonsense and let me do
my work and share with family + friends.

~~~
dreamcompiler
I'm getting tired of their constantly dropping support for older versions of
MacOS (I don't upgrade MacOS often because every new version is a net
productivity hit for me), and their upgrader daemon that

A. Cannot be shut off, and

B. Upgrades my Dropbox client whether I want it to or not. Even with Google's
very determined auto-upgrader, I finally figured out how to shut it off. Not
Dropbox.

Here we go again. Every constant-growth oriented company with happy customers
eventually decides to go to war with said customers as a last-ditch effort to
extract more revenue, and thus forces them to its competition.

~~~
oauea
If you refuse to update your software you deserve to have a hard time.

~~~
chrismeller
That’s a bit harsh. While I understand not wanting to perform a new OS update
(at least not immediately) or not being able to (they deprecate old hardware
too) I do understand that it’s a matter of resources and that most people are
going to be on a handful of your most recent releases, so it makes sense to
spend your time on those.

At the same time (most) people don’t actively seek to disable updates for
things until something goes wrong. If your app is working on my current OS and
filesystem it’s incumbent upon you to recognize that and not automatically
push out an update that breaks that.

For something as relatively simple as Dropbox’s original functionality (all
files from folder x are synced to their server and every other machine on your
account) it also seems like a relatively reasonable ask for them to version
things and continue to support that functionality for quite a long time.

~~~
lowercased
> it also seems like a relatively reasonable ask for them to version things
> and continue to support that functionality for quite a long time.

Or... just don't force an upgrade. Notify me at some point that it might not
be 'supported' after a certain date, and subject to data loss, etc. We
understand with many other pieces of software that after a certain date, they
may still 'work' but we won't get support.

There's certainly some security risks to deal with there, and perhaps
reminders closer to cutoff dates would help?

But, yes, basically agreed.

relatedly, I've had dropbox on and off, but felt pushed in to paying for it,
and resented that push (and ultimately never did). Had multiple client years
ago all 'love' dropbox and wanted to work that way. They all loved that it was
'free', but... when I had to work with 5 of them, each sharing up to their
'free' limit with me, it put me over the free limit in to 'pay up' territory.
Not a 'break the bank' amount, of course, but it bugged me that _I_ needed to
fork out.

~~~
chrismeller
> Or... just don't force an upgrade. Notify me at some point that it might not
> be 'supported' after a certain date, and subject to data loss, etc. We
> understand with many other pieces of software that after a certain date,
> they may still 'work' but we won't get support.

> There's certainly some security risks to deal with there, and perhaps
> reminders closer to cutoff dates would help?

That was actually my whole point. If you have security updates to push, then
push them. An automatic push should not break my existing functionality under
normal circumstances. There will always be extraordinary situations where it’s
required, and at some point you do have to make the tough call that the
hundred people still using something will just have to deal with it... but it
shouldn’t be the norm.

------
syntheticnature
Contrast with: [https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-
other...](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-
programs-with-similar-functionality/answer/Michael-Wolfe)

~~~
doodpants
I was thinking the same thing. As I read the page, all I could think was, "No,
shut up." :-)

~~~
lotsofpulp
I think the situation has changed with mobile devices and mobile OS becoming
just as important as desktop. For consumers, they want whatever is easiest,
results in better battery life, and secure. Presumably, Apple will be better
able to integrate folder syncing due to their ownership of iOS, and so Dropbox
is wise to be concerned that they can lose their edge there, since switching
vendors is a matter of dragging a folder from one window to another for the
consumer.

------
jxdxbx
What a disaster. The entire initial premise of Dropbox was to sync files
reliably. Then I can use real, native apps to edit them. The new Dropbox
approach on the other hand inherently requires everything to be in the cloud--
I already hate that, but even if I didn't, others already do this and do it
better.

I feel like Microsoft actually has the balance right. OneDrive still behaves
just like a normal sync client. But to do certain kinds of real-time
collaboration you can just point native, desktop Office apps to the cloud
version of the file. But when you're offline you still have the same kinds of
access you need.

Who ever asked for Dropbox OS?

~~~
timdorr
The problem is, files are dying. 99% of the documents shared with me nowadays
exist only in some cloud product. No one sends files anymore, it's all Google
Docs links and such.

The only real place where files still live are with developers and designers.
And even then, the move is away from locally-hosted content and stuff that
only exists on someone else's server. VS Code remoting, Sketch Cloud, etc etc.

Dropbox is just fighting against the tide of the entire Internet. I don't
disagree that it's disastrous, but what are they going to do? Their core
product is going away. It's like being an oil company nowadays.

------
FunnyLookinHat
The blog has a loading icon? It took 10-15 seconds to render for me.

Anyone else think this client-side app trend has gotten in the way of
recognizing a great case for a server-side render (or even a cached page)?

~~~
dreamcompiler
99% of client-side rendered pages would provide a superior user experience
with server-side render. SSR is what the web was designed for after all. CSR
is merely fashionable, not better.

~~~
onion2k
_99% of client-side rendered pages would provide a superior user experience
with server-side render._

If you're loading a single page and then unloading it that's right. If you're
interacting with a page it's often _a lot_ faster to make a small request to
fetch new data and just update the part of the DOM that needs to change rather
than unloading everything, fetching the new page and all the associated
resources that aren't cached, parsing the new page, and repainting everything.

 _SSR is what the web was designed for after all._

That's plain wrong. Using a browser to launch an application was one the use
cases in Tim Berners-Lee's original memo about the web in 1989 - "If one
sacrifices portability, it is possible so make following a link fire up a
special application, so that diagnostic programs, for example, could be linked
directly into the maintenance guide."
([https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html](https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html)).
There's no suggestion that the user would have to leave their browser when
they clicked such a link.

Fast forward 10 years from Tim's proposal and Microsoft added XMLHttpRequest
(via ActiveX) for fetching fragments of data to IE5 in 1999. We've had 20
years, which is 2/3 of the time the web has existed, of client-side
applications. You may well have a preference for server-side rendering but you
don't get to claim the web was designed for server-side as a fact. It's not
true.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Two things: Ajax is a good idea and I have no problem with it. CSR _for
updates_ is not an issue. My problem is with using it for _whole pages_ that
cannot render at all until a huge JS program has been run. When you're
building a SPA, this is fine. But most web pages (like the original blog post
here) shouldn't be SPAs.

Second, I didn't remember that clause from TBR's memo, so thanks for the
reminder.

------
diziet
I do a lot of UI/UX design as a part of what I focus on, both at work and for
fun. This page is a juxtaposition of well thought out elements and things that
make me go `???`.

Like:

    
    
      - Good product marketing messaging
      - Well done images and GIFs that get to the point
      - News-site like past first article scrolling, I bet it drives more engagement. I even like how the UI elements change color when you go to another article.
    

What?:

    
    
      - Huge spinning circular thing at the top
      - Content not taking the whole size of the page but strangely   taking the right 2/3rds~
      - Non-retina images
    

Would love to see metrics on:

    
    
      - Tweet highlight integration. Does it drive valuable KPIs?
      - Font: They are using https://sharptype.co/case-studies/dropbox/ . The case study from the foundry that made that font has a section with color `rgb(181, 208, 230);` font on a `linear-gradient( #d20b28 , #d20b28 );` background. That's light blue on somewhere between scarlet, crimson, vermillion or venetian red color space. My brain slightly breaks reading it. Does having your own font drive engagement? What do the KPIs on that look like?

~~~
steve_adams_86
This entire launch feels like what you've described. Things like these tool
tips are absolutely killing me:
[https://cl.ly/365a42db2db9](https://cl.ly/365a42db2db9)

It feels rough on the edges.

~~~
TN1ck
Oh wow, thanks for sharing that! Heavy animations are always tricky for
productivity apps, as the increase in latency is bad for the day to day usage.
This animation doesn't even look good and is just annoying after the third
sight. For a productivity app, even a simple fade is sometimes too much.
Really wonder how this could get approved.

------
mromanuk
Story of a disruptive product

    
    
      1. make something simple and useful
      2. grow big
      3. add more features
      4. repeat steps 2-3 several times
      5. congratulations your product is now bloatware

------
codingdave
Whenever I see moves like this, I think to myself how little of a real
positive impact SharePoint had in the Enterprise world. And that was linking
Office products, in large organizations that already used the products, and
already collaborated for their jobs, while including the ability to write code
against it all.

Trying to build the same functional goals, for people who not under a single
organization's umbrella, to link together products that are not coming from a
single vendor, and not designed to work together... feels like a stretch.

~~~
gowld
over a decade later, Google still has nothing comparable to Sharepoint.
Everything is slow and bloated web apps preventing users from finding /
reading / editing documents that should be synced locally.

~~~
jimbob45
Except not? Google Docs is simple for finding / reading / editing documents
that are synced via the cloud. Why did you pretend to agree with the parent
commenter if you were gonna contradict them?

------
tvanantwerp
My office uses Dropbox Business extensively, and I'm not excited by any kind
of "new" Dropbox. Businesses need to trust in the stability of their tools,
and this signals to me the exact opposite of stability. I haven't got any clue
how this could interfere with the workflows we've already established. Major
product changes like this give me anxiety.

------
herf
I really love Dropbox Paper, so I get part of the collaboration story.

What I don't like is that it's so hard to share a file, or to send an image in
a chat -- all paths lead to dropbox links instead. When I get a Dropbox link
on mobile chat now, I know it's going to take nearly a minute to see the
content. Why?

~~~
CondensedBrain
They probably think of it in terms of control. One of their big upsells is
controlling access to shares. They don't see it as a problem that you have to
save it to the device then share from that because it's not _for_ you from
their perspective. It's for people sending project assets to collaborators.

~~~
aianus
I think it makes a lot sense for the dropbox link to be the default,
especially on mobile.

I almost never want to download the file over LTE to my smartphone and re-
upload it to a different web service and waste (2 * filesize) of my limited
mobile bandwidth to share a file.

------
rangibaby
I like Dropbox again lately.

They added smart sync and 1TB extra to “plus” accounts, which is nice after
their pathetic use of Finder integration + OS notifications to nag users to
upgrade to the next paid tier (on a paid account!). It’s what they should have
done in the first place.

~~~
wingerlang
They also increased the price right? What I want is lower space and lower
price.

------
sciurus
It looks like Dropbox is completely focused on the business market and not
improving the consumer experience anymore. I've stuck with them for years
because of the linux support, but am probably going to jump ship soon. My main
complaint is the lack of a way to build a shared photo library with my spouse.
Both Google and Apple support this.

~~~
roel_v
But switch to where? All.the alternatives don't have the features and/or are
even more unreliable (Google).

If only Fastmail would build a product like this, them I would trust...

~~~
sciurus
Switch to Google Drive and Google Photos, most likely.

I'd have local backups, so I don't think I'd trust it any less with my data
than I trust Dropbox.

------
jedisct1
This is awful.

I'm a Dropbox Pro user, using it to store documents that have to be accessible
from all my devices, as well as to share galleries with my clients.

None of these integrations with Slack and Zoom make sense. I don't need them,
and now that a product I used to trust for its simplicity and reliability has
become a horribly bloated beast, I don't trust it any more.

This is bad, Dropbox. Maybe sell this as a totally different product, but for
people, including corporate users, that only want reliable file syncing, this
is a big turn off.

------
s9w
Dropbox is the worst offender of feature creep I know. Why would I possibly
want to create new files in Dropbox?

~~~
ben509
It has some tough competition, e.g. RealPlayer.

------
timdiggerm
At least the interface is still the same colors, instead of the gross palette
of the blog and their rebrand.

~~~
uasm
The blog looks like one giant acid trip.

~~~
Operyl
Totally agree. The first thing I found myself doing was staring at the silly
animation on the top left for a minute, what a waste of time.

EDIT: Oh god the front page is just as much of an acid trip now.

~~~
dumbfounder
That gif on the blog made me physically ill.

~~~
Operyl
The "tall letters" on the post title kind of did me in there. I don't know
what they were thinking.

------
benjaminwootton
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.

;)

------
F00Fbug
Not what we need!

When they dropped support for XFS, I was locked out and happily went looking
for a replacement.

Syncthing ( [https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/) ) does everything
I need. Instead of some nameless cloud company hosting my stuff, my 'cloud
copy' is a big USB hard drive on a Raspberry Pi.

I still have to keep Dropbox because of a couple of multi-org projects I'm
involved with use it. I'm done putting my personal stuff on it, though.

~~~
jxdxbx
I'd be interested in something like Syncthing, but it would have to have an
iOS client that worked correctly as a file provider. Both Dropbox and Google
Drive have half-implemented Files support (Dropbox doesn't work offline via
Files even when Files are saved offline in the app, Google Drive doesn't allow
you to create new files via the Files APIs, and both are pretty buggy all
around).

------
gus_massa
Sorry for been negative, but I liked the simplicity of the old Dropbox: You
create a magical folder in a machine, a magical folder in another machine, and
they are automatically synchronized using pixie dust or something. I don't
want a new social media network.

------
brightball
And the new desktop app is Windows and Mac only. Of course.

My primary reason for using Dropbox initially when it first came out was
because it was fully cross platform. The longer they go, the farther we get
from that.

The only Linux updates I’ve seen from them have been deprecating support for
things.

~~~
octorian
And I wonder how long that'll last... I chose Dropbox _because_ of the Linux
support, as I actually use all 3 of the major platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux)
regularly.

If I have to leave Dropbox, I honestly don't know what I'd replace it with. It
works well enough on all 3 of the platforms I use it on, that I really don't
want to switch to some janky duct-taped alternative.

Meanwhile, it seems like every other hot startup product has this somewhere in
their FAQ:

Q: Will you support Linux?

A: Here at Foocorp, we all love Linux! Seriously, we're huge fans! However,
we've decided that we can best serve our customers by focusing on our Windows
(and maybe Mac) products and giving the middle finger to you annoying Linux
users.

~~~
brightball
Maybe it’s time for ownCloud?

~~~
josteink
Nextcloud is the proper fork to use these days.

------
rrmoelker
Heads up, downloads 20MB and might take a long time to load (for some reason
it took over a minute on my laptop)

------
bin0
Oh yay, a new interface to learn. Just what every body asked for, not.
Companies do this all the time to justify higher prices. Some times, a well-
done piece of software can just go into maintenance mode for a while.

But do you know what I hate about dropbox? Dropping support for most linux
filesystems. Seriously, why? That was the one deciding factor for me. I had
looked at other options, but that did it. Owncloud does a fine job, and most
people at my company like it fine.

------
brandon272
I remember the feeling I had when I first used Dropbox - I was excited. The
app itself was so unobtrusive and managed to sync my files fast and reliably.
It seemed crazy _not_ to use it because there was so little compromise
involved.

Fast forward to today, years later, where I don't have _any_ syncing solution
enabled on my computer. And not because I don't want or need syncing - but
because all of the current offerings, including Dropbox, are either bloated or
have performance issues or lack reliability.

Dropbox chose a path and it is what it is. Maybe this strategy is working for
them in with respect to revenue growth, and that's great for them, but when
I'm here without a syncing solution that I would gladly pay for, it seems like
an opportunity is being missed somewhere.

------
ChrisRR
Jesus, what is this mess? I just want to be able to sync files without any
hassle. In fact, I'm willing to pay for that luxury.

Why does Dropbox need video conferencing now?

------
mvexel
The single reason why I prefer Dropbox over the other file storage / sync
products is that their sync client works so much better on Mac. It eats fewer
resources, is quicker to start and sync once started, doesn't need to 'restart
its sync engine', and has the most flexible selective sync. The addition of
'smart sync' to personal accounts is a nice recent addition.

I don't care for all this new functionality targeted at collaboration /
corporate use, and I hope Dropbox will start offering a barebones 'I only need
to sync files between devices' plan. I've been happily paying $120/y for that
for years and hope they let me continue to do just that, or at least stay out
of my way they way they have in the past.

~~~
asdff
I think you should explore some of the alternatives every once in a while, or
just maintain a free plan and like 1 folder. Just checked activity monitor and
onedrive only uses ~60mb of more ram on idle at least, although (and I believe
it's since been pached) it had a memory leak bug at one point and would start
eagerly consuming my 16gb of ram if left unchecked. The fix for that was just
restarting one drive after startup, no big deal. Even on big syncs (I did
~250gb one time) it syncs about as fast as my upload speeds go and didn't seem
to bog down my computer at all.

------
g_sch
My first reaction: this feels like it's adding a lot of noise and clutter to
the interface, but also a lot of powerful collaboration tools. Personally,
I've been using Dropbox to sync files between my devices, so this redesign is
clearly not targeted toward me. But if it works, it might help Dropbox make
inroads in the business/enterprise market that Box seems to be dominating so
far.

------
martin_drapeau
So they created a SPA which takes 6MB to 7MB and 220+ requests to list files
in a directory?! That's a whole lot of engineering. In fact, they seem to have
recreated Google Drive. SharePoint online is also the same - very long time to
load.

As a user, I just want to view files in directories. The landing page should
show me the last documents I worked on. That's pretty much all I need.

------
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.

------
alpb
Dropbox is constantly getting worse for personal usage. They recently bumped
up the prices about $10+ a year.

As a photo storage, it fails heavily as well. They turned down the Carousel
app which made it super easy to browse photos over time. Google Photos easily
dominates this space with the search features. Right now the Photos experience
on Dropbox lacks the most basic features and I'm planning to stop renewing my
personal Dropbox subscription this year, primarily because of poor photo
storage support.

For everything else, I'm planning to just go with S3/GCS and just rsync my
files in there periodically.

~~~
orloffm
And what are you planning to do with photos? Are you aware of any mobile app
of Google Photos caliber that can just point to a S3 bucket?

------
fourier_mode
I am pretty sure, its not going to be well received by HN, for the simple
reason that they are appealing to their corporate audiences rather than
developers.

------
the_af
I use Dropbox to sync my data between home and work computers, both running
Ubuntu. I need this to be transparent, and for Dropbox UX to be invisible. So
far this has been the case. If they change this, I'll stop using it. I'm not
sure from this announcement if I can simply ignore all these new features and
continue using it as always.

------
eyeball
I just want my files backed up and sync’d across device.

iCloud changes look promising. May be time to ditch Dropbox. If only Apple
would have a good app on Linux and let me run Mac OS time machine into iCloud.

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

~~~
FullyFunctional
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 them many times, to no avail), I
could live with the second.

~~~
Shorel
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.

------
ketralnis
All I want from Dropbox is a $5/mo plan. $12/mo for 2 TB, maybe 100mb of which
I'll ever use, is just too much. $12/mo pays for a whole ec2 instances to host
your own on

------
joshstrange
I don't know what I was expecting but it was not this mess, dear god not a
SINGLE feature on this "New Dropbox" is even slightly appealing to me. I just
want reliable file-syncing. I enjoy smart sync on my MacBook since I have so
many pictures and other large files and smart selection (or whatever it was
called) wasn't really cutting it for me. Other than that there isn't anything
Dropbox has added in the last 5 years that I have cared about.

I have to imagine there are a number of open-source alternatives now that just
require a linux server in the cloud. Hell Backblaze B2 storage works out to
about $70/yr for 1TB of space with with 100GB of churn (adding 100GB and
deleting 100GB) and download each month (way more than I need), couple that
with some syncing tool and I think you've got just about everything I need.

~~~
meesles
I recently stumbled on this project, seems promising:
[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

------
bane
I'm surprised how few people here have talked about OneDrive. It used to be
rubbish, but Microsoft has finally really figured it out. My company basically
has everybody just do all of their work out of their OneDrive accounts,
syncing hundreds of GB per user without fuss.

The integration with their web office apps is pretty flawless, and I've worked
with groups of 20 or 30 people on large projects in sharepoint and whatnot
without any major fuss.

The web versions of the office tools are fairly basic, but you can seamlessly
open them in the desktop equivalents and it autosaves back to the one-drive
copy. Even better you can email links around to people and they can view the
one-drive copy without any problem or having to send attachments all over the
place.

I haven't used the personal version yet, but it's a very compelling business
offering.

~~~
tw04
They still have weird rules around file names that can break syncing and
sharing entirely. Be nice if they could just handle that in the client.

------
jpmattia
For all the gnashing of teeth on this thread, I think the bigger point is
being missed:

Most of the Dropbox post is pitching for collaboration. They have probably
recognized that catering to teams has much better revenue growth than mere
individual users.

------
drageth
Dropbox continues to become bloated but it’s still the only client that
supports delta sync across platforms. I tried switching to onedrive and google
drive but they all are lacking in sync capability.

------
josteink
The new Dropbox for me:

\- the free plan completely gimped with only 3 devices allowed to link

\- the official Linux client effectively rendered useless as it no longer
works on anything except ext4 filesystems (an artificial limitations added
years after I’ve gone all in ZFS).

The new Dropbox clearly wants me to leave. Which is a shame.

I’ve always chosen Dropbox because it was _the_ universal solution which “just
worked” everywhere, while all the competitors had a catch here or there.

Now Dropbox are intentionally adding limitations making it non-universal, and
therefore losing its own unique selling point.

------
bradam
You should not consider Dropbox a file storage and sync provider, anymore.
Dropbox (and almost all other big established storage/sync providers) moved to
a new territory (market) called Content Collaboration Platform. This contains
applications which provide comprehensive capabilities that support use cases
from productivity and collaboration to content protection and infrastructure
modernization. As some of you already mentioned, there are several reasons for
it:

1\. File storage and syncing is commodity. It is quite easy (compared to what
was 5-10-15 years ago) to create a sharing & syncing capability software.
Also, there are AWS/Azure as infrastructure so no one needs to handle this
part of the business.

2\. These big providers move to small-medium business and enterprise sector
from personal users. It easy to understand, an enterprise contract with 5000+
users a year is much more profitable than acquiring loads of personal users
who do not want to pay at all most of the times.

3\. Lastly, big companies want to buy an integrated solution, which handles
not just one thing well™, but contains extended functionality and support
external providers. In Dropbox's case its file commenting, Zoom & Slack
integration, etc.

Source: I work at an end-to-end Encrypted cloud storage and sync company as an
analyst, reading market research and analyzing companies like Dropbox 9to5.

------
usaar333
It's interesting to contrast the comments here to the short stream on
/r/dropbox:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dropbox/comments/bzfwxv/meet_the_ne...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dropbox/comments/bzfwxv/meet_the_new_dropbox_dropbox_blog/)

I'm guessing most folks here aren't actually the target market anymore for
Dropbox ("teams that use Dropbox as the main workspace" as one commenter
phrases it)

------
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?

------
jressey
Wow, that takes way too long to load. SPAs killed the internet.

------
diegof79
I used to be a Dropbox fan: it was the first program installed on a new
machine, and I recommend it to friends and family.

However, I never converted to a paying user. That seems to be contradictory
and maybe another data point of how hard could be growing a global user base.

I live in Argentina. Here any subscription in USD should be considered
carefully. Each time that I evaluated to become a paying Dropbox customer, I
decided that the cost/value equation didn't work for me:

\- Photos: Google Photos works very well on mobile, and they give you
unlimited space (if you are willing to sacrifice picture quality).

\- Files: I end using iCloud or Drive for the occasional file sharing in the
cloud. When I evaluated subscribing to Dropbox for my father -which is also an
Office user- the Microsoft Office365 (that includes OneDrive) was much more
convenient.

\- Backup: A huge chunk of my work files are in Drive (because of GSuite for
companies), or in Github. The rest (like iPhone Backup) is by default upload
to iCloud.

\- Mobile Apps: Before iCloud, many apps included the option to sync with
Dropbox (and they created an API for that). But after the iCloud improvements,
now that option is missing from most of the iOS apps.

\- Paper: it's a great idea, and for a moment I imagined that Dropbox was
going to compete with design sharing tools (like InVision). But when I tried
Paper, it wasn't enough to do the switch.

I hope that Dropbox is able to find a good product strategy because I used to
love their product. This announcement and my personal experience make me think
that they are facing a turning point.

------
yoran
I wish Dropbox Paper would adopt some of the features for organization that we
see in Notion or Slite. Our team has moved to using one of those services
because our Dropbox Paper folders became a mess. At some point, you just stop
remembering where you put things and finding documents becomes too much of a
friction. The simple sidebar that you can see on Notion or Slite makes a huge
difference in getting an overview of the organization.

------
perlgeek
I seem to recall that Dropbox once tried to become a platform, and failed
miserably.

Is this the second attempt?

I'd prefer it if they just made file syncing easier.

~~~
CondensedBrain
Paper is one of the best writing experiences I've ever had, and the export
option is solid, but that's about it. It's trying to operate in the space
already taken by OneNote. The web-based tools in Office already output to real
files you can get at through OneDrive. Even Google's office suite doesn't do
that.

That's probably where Dropbox sees itself headed: the corporate office suite
space Microsoft currently dominates. I don't think Dropbox has much of a
chance there. There was a time when Microsoft was in a shaky enough position
for someone to knock them down, but then they got a new CEO and convinced
people to take another look.

~~~
chrismorgan
Paper is good at managing collaborative editing, but I find it _awful_ as a
general editor: instead of working with what the browser provides, it tries to
be clever and implement most things from scratch, and like almost everything
that ever takes that approach, fails painfully, sitting firmly in the uncanny
valley. (It definitely has various nice features that ameliorate this pain,
but I still don’t like it at all.) Over the last year or so I have reported I
think five or six distinct bugs (in three messages, I think), mostly ones that
are _really_ annoying for me, and I have not heard back from them, nor, to the
best of my knowledge, have any of them been fixed. The one I hit the most
regularly is selecting text at the start of a paragraph, and starting typing;
for example if capitalising a list that someone else typed in lowercase. What
you type goes onto a new line, rather than the same line. (I do not recall any
of the other bugs I’ve reported off-hand; because I don’t actually use Paper
all that much.)

And ugh, hanging punctuation is just a bad novelty that is of dubious value in
prose, and strongly negative value in other forms of content. I believe it has
no place in something like Paper—it feels to me like one of the developers
came across the concept and thought “that sounds cool, can I make it work in
Paper?” (and did a decent, though not brilliant, job of it, I admit) without
stopping and thinking whether they _should_ do it.

Oh, and Paper is _so slow_ to load, just like Dropbox is these days. I only
open either when I _have_ to, they’re so slow to load and resource-heavy.

------
lr
Unrelated to this "new" thing, but what is it with corporate blogs: They
almost never have a direct link back to the product website! Why is there not
a link to [https://www.dropbox.com](https://www.dropbox.com) at the top of the
page?!

------
marc_omorain
I have a few qualms with this app:

1\. 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. From Windows or Mac, this FTP
account could be accessed through built-in software.

2\. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files
to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform
presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity
problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.

3\. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is
premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it
reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

------
dreamcompiler
There's a ridiculous amout of unnecessary dancing monkey Javascript on this
page.

------
arkitaip
I would be surprised if Dropbox still exists as an independent company in five
years. Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Apple iCloud are good enough,
cheap and integrate well with respective player's eco system that makes it
incredibility difficult for competitors.

------
radimm
Trying to remember the last time I have / wanted to use Dropbox.

\- backup/photo storage went to iCloud Drive (shared family space)

\- Notes sharing (Apple Notes or Google Drive)

\- File storage (iCloud/Google Drive)

\- Photo storage (Google Photos)

There were times when Dropbox was omnipresent. So interesting to see, but no,
thank you.

------
nostromo
Dropbox's home and landing page design language is so completely different
than their actual product -- it's like they're two different companies.

Compare their disjointed design to companies that do it well, like Stripe and
Apple, and it's night and day.

------
swalsh
I used to run OpenSuse, when I installed it, I basically just went for the
express install, which formatted my drive with xfs. I had dropbox setup, and
one day a popup told me it was no longer supported. They decided my file
system was not secure enough to store my own files. Their solution was I
should repartition my drive using ext4. Then reinstall. That sounded like a
bunch of work I didn't want to do, so I googled for competitors. Found one,
and was able to import all my files in a few minutes. Haven't had a reason to
switch back since.

Today I'm an Arch user, and my filesystem is EXT4... but I haven't found a
reason to switch back. The new service is working just fine.

~~~
paride5745
Out of curiosity, what do you use now?

I just went full Linux and I am looking for a good Cloud storage for my docs
and pics.

------
cwyers
This is the exact opposite of what I'm interested in -- the UI for cloud files
should be the UI for files on my local machine. Pretty much every time I have
to abandon the Windows file folder UI in OneNote, I feel like something has
failed somewhere.

------
jchw
Can they just remove Linux support already? It’s been abandoned. I cancelled
my Dropbox for this reason, and it gets worse every year.

I realize some will appreciate missing this update, but alas, what happened to
Skype has made me realize it’s never a good thing.

~~~
awill
Agree. If you don't care about it, drop it. Then users will immediately get
the message rather than be frustrated as support gets worse and worse. I'm
glad I use the xfs filesystem on Arch Linux. I dumped Dropbox immediately.
Pretty happy with insync for Drive.

------
amacbride
Do Not Want.

(Seriously, I understand the need for companies to broaden product offerings,
explore new markets, etc., but it often leads to the original product that
made them successful getting neglected, discontinued, or made terrible in some
fashion.)

------
cmg
If I didn't need Dropbox for client work, I'd be dropping my Pro account
today. They sent a nice flowery email [0] yesterday talking about some of the
new features.

I decided this was a good reminder to go and check my Dropbox security
settings and logged into the website -- which I rarely ever do. Only then did
I see that my yearly price was increasing by nearly $21. [1] That should have
been made very clear in the email.

[0] [https://imgur.com/S04UAtL](https://imgur.com/S04UAtL) [1]
[https://imgur.com/Dq4tzW8](https://imgur.com/Dq4tzW8)

~~~
bluetidepro
It seems you missed the original email, or something messed up and you weren't
sent it. I got the [0] that you linked to today, but also got this email last
Tuesday: [http://bluetide.pro/k9NN8v](http://bluetide.pro/k9NN8v) \- Which was
the original email from them that was informing the change, and it was very
clear. Today's email (your [0]) was just the marketing follow up email saying
the plan features were now available.

~~~
cmg
You're right. I just searched again and that came in a week before yesterday's
email.

So while I admit I forgot about or glossed over the original email, the
flowery marketing email should have had a reminder about that.

------
pihalbrecht
What are the best alternatives to Dropbox?

Is google drive better?

~~~
randlet
pCloud works well for me (support for all major platforms). Google drive has
no Linux support which is a deal killer for me.

~~~
dcx
pCloud looks pretty good - I happen to be shopping around for a Dropbox
replacement too. But just a heads-up, when I checked around online I found
these [1] [2] [3] comments. It sounds like they have a tool that runs
internally to detect piracy and it sometimes picks up false positives, which
might cause your account to be deleted?

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/am2xbn/pcloud_allo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/am2xbn/pcloud_allows_public_to_view_and_report_your/)

[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pcloud/comments/aedoeq/so_i_want_to...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcloud/comments/aedoeq/so_i_want_to_get_lifetime_but_out_of_what_i_read/ej09og1/)

[3]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/6d9yyb/pcloud_allo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/6d9yyb/pcloud_allowing_3rd_parties_to_scan_files/)

~~~
ben509
From their terms[1]: "pCloud will have the right to investigate and prosecute
breaches of any of the above to the fullest extent of the law. pCloud may
involve and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting users
who breach these Terms. You acknowledge that pCloud has no obligation to
monitor your access to or use of the Site or Services or to review or edit any
User Content, but has the right to do so for the purpose of operating the Site
or Services, to ensure your compliance with these Terms, or to comply with the
applicable law or the order or requirement of a court, administrative agency
or other governmental body."

They also have the usual "we'll take down anything that Disney tells us to"
DMCA arrangement. Are other clerd providers better?

[1]:
[https://www.pcloud.com/terms_and_conditions.html](https://www.pcloud.com/terms_and_conditions.html)

------
workingpatrick
I see these new integrations and all I can think about is the privacy
implications.

~~~
narrowtux
You don't have to enable integrations.

~~~
workingpatrick
It's nice that they are optional, do you know if they are opt-in or opt-out?

------
jrs235
From their website: "It’s pretty amazing how much technology helps us
accomplish at work. Things that used to take days now take hours, and many
small tasks—like updating a spreadsheet cell—are as easy as they should be."

Let me fix that for them...

It's pretty amazing how much constantly changing the UI and workflows slows us
down from getting work done. Things that use to take seconds now take minutes,
small tasks-like finding a file-take longer and require more cpu cycles
because you need to use search (assuming you know the file name you're
searching for) rather than using the previous, familiar directory structure UI
which either a) no longer exists or b) takes several extra clicks and minutes
to reveal again.

As I mentioned in another comment: I contacted support a few weeks ago because
I couldn't find the file(s) I was looking for. They keep changing the UI. They
told me to use the search feature. That feature is lacking and it doesn't help
that I don't know the filename since it was an uploaded photo from my phone. I
left them feedback that the UX sucks and that they need to stop changing
things for changing sake. Things are/have gotten worse regarding their UX. I
think their devs are thinking and selling themselves on their ideas of what
improvements are rather than current customers. If they want to try new
things, leave the existing product alone and a launch an entirely new(er)
product like DHH and basecamp do without disrupting their own existing paying
customers![1]. Don't upset happy customers and give them a reason to re-
evaluate your offering and other options.

[1] [https://businessofsoftware.org/2015/10/david-heinemeier-
hans...](https://businessofsoftware.org/2015/10/david-heinemeier-hans..).

------
michaelmrose
Already replaced Dropbox with Syncthing when they decided to only support ext4

------
mundu_wa_hinya
They lost me when they nuked xfs support (which was working beautifully). I
can't rework my nas FS which has TBs of data just to get Dropbox. I'm just
waiting for my yearly subscription to expire...

------
pi-rat
Aha, so that’s why Dropbox now uses half a gb of ram and bundles chromium...

------
yangcheng
I don't get why I would save a google doc in Dropbox. I just tried that, and
the Dropbox's search can't search content on my google doc. The google doc
also takes five more seconds to load compared to if I just create a google doc
on google, and it's not available offline either. So what're the real benefits
users get?

------
robbiemitchell
This isn't just about Dropbox. Notice the enhanced collaboration with Slack
and Atlassian (which is already an equity holder in Slack).

This alliance looks like an attempt to displace Microsoft in owning the
"office runtime". You have Microsoft's Teams, Office 365, and Github vs.
Slack, Dropbox, and Jira.

The interesting thing is that Google is actually in a much better position to
do this by way of GSuite, but their own internal messaging answer to Slack
hasn't gotten out of pre-launch.

------
bdz
I was thinking about using Amazon Drive (100 GB for $12 a year is perfect) but
for some reason their upload client changes the date properties of every
single file (creation and last modified). So for example if you have a file
from 2011.01.12 it will be changed to the current day today no matter what.
Not sure why is it doing it but kinda breaks the deal for me otherwise I'd
switch there...

------
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.

------
sambe
Unlimited version history is still listed on my account. I recall this was
grandfathered indefinitely for all existing users. Does anyone know how this
fits with the new announcement?

I have only ever used it outside of 30 days, and the "yay! look what we are
forcing on you at a large price increase" email is not especially welcome
anyway.

------
meerita
They did a horrible redesign, killing amazing UX and UI in favor of a hypter
design fantasy. This one still shows the hangover. I feel really sad and bad
for the those amazing guys who made the Dropbox product I've used back then
when i valued a good cloud storage, sync and a web screen to manage things
when i had any trouble.

------
tjr225
Was going to use Dropbox pro as my photo handling solution but they don't
support NFS!? I keep all of my photos on a NAS by my router. I'm sure there is
some way around it but Flickr's auto uploader works fine with my NFS set up.
This is related to the post I just made in the google photos post.

------
runxel
For a moment I was like "oh wait, there STILL alive?"

They just got worse and worse in the last years while being somewhat
aggressive... "No, shut up!" I don't need no Business Dropbex, who the hell
you think I am?

Also prices went up – but I can have 10TB locally for 250 bucks meanwhile.

------
rkagerer
Ugh. Do not want. Dropbox used to be a great little tool that did it's job
well. Now they're trying to turn it into a Swiss army knife that will do
several things with mediocrity.

I stopped loving Dropbox when they killed off Public Links, and it's gotten
worse from there.

------
redler
Their strategy looks like an attempt in the direction of becoming a sort of
third-party Google Wave.

------
vnorilo
1\. Implement rsync + ftp

2\. Take venture capital

3\. Gotta jump that shark

------
neverminder
And yet still no changes in pricing. For individuals it's either 2 GB free or
2 TB for 12 euro per month, nothing in between. I'd be fine with 100 GB.
Dropbox has native linux client, but shit pricing, Google Drive has better
pricing, but no linux client.

------
nkkollaw
I'm still waiting for Dropbox to support placeholder files for personal
accounts.

I feel like there is more functionality to their (now old) core proposition
that they could be working on instead of trying to be a better Google Drive
for Google products.

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simonebrunozzi
Dropbox doesn't care about individual customers. The real money for them is in
the enterprise. There, different priorities are at play.

Unfortunately, I've been a Dropbox user for many years but I'm really tempted
to switch away.

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Mikho
Why would people still use Box, Dropbox, etc. when MS Office subscription
provides so much more value, including huge storage, Office apps, and cross-
platform integrations for less money. That's basically no brainer.

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donatj
Is there an alternative to Dropbox that properly handles resource forks?
(macOS tags, file comments, custom icons, etc?) My heavy use of them is what
has kept me on Dropbox rather than Google Drive for the time being.

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judge2020
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but the desktop app is basically an electron
app by using QTWebengine (Chromium embedded).

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ycombinete
Is there a good alternative to Dropbox that also does block-level file
syncing?

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schnable
You can pay a few bucks more, get cloud storage AND Office from Microsoft.

~~~
fencepost
Less than that actually if it's personal (O365 Personal 1TB, Home up to 5 I
think), or a little more for business and get OneDrive+SharePoint and hosted
Exchange email. Works nicely on Windows 10, a little less so on older
versions, and probably a lot less well on *nix which is relevant since a lot
of folks on this thread are concerned about the loss of ZFS support. Not sure
how it is on OS X but hopefully decent.

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maxxxxx
I always get scared when I read “meet the new xxxxx”. Usually either the UI
has been reshuffled or features have been dropped. It’s really rare that
things get better with such an announcement.

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maehwasu
The fact that Dropbox has access to your files is a nightmare waiting to
happen. Yes, I know they currently don’t use them for anything bad. No one
ever does, until they do. I’m out.

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siproprio
While we're at it, dropbox paper also refuses to allow users to remove entries
from the "recently viewed" history, if the document is owned by someone else.

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rrggrr
This will fail. Drop.io (acquired by Facebook) was the model they should have
pursued. I need an environment to share info with clients and this isn't that.

~~~
laurencei
Drop.io domain is for sale? Did FB close it down when they purchased it?

------
crad
Anyone else find the design of the page so distracting it was hard to focus on
the content? All of the animation behavior, hiding and showing of elements,
etc.

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timwis
I would have been excited if these were open integration points; instead it's
just allowing you to connect your various walled gardens together :(

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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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ionwake
Can someone summarise the changes in a couple of sentences? I haven't got a
clue what the differences are after sepdning a couple of minutes on the site.

Thank you

~~~
vorpalhex
"Enterprise" features including half baked slack integrations, and web
shortcuts like it's 1999

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rossdavidh
So, it appears that Dropbox is letting feature creep turn a perfectly good
product which I would have paid for forever, into one I need to leave. What is
the best alternative? Just looking for automatic syncing and backup, and the
historical versions available from the server is nice also. Suggestions?
Simpler is better.

~~~
flipcoder
I switched to MEGA. The desktop client MEGAsync is actually quite decent. Very
similar to classic dropbox

------
asdff
Anyone running nextcloud on their server? Interested in building one now that
a year of 2tb dropbox costs as much as a 1tb ssd and a raspberry pi.

------
m00x
This website is near impossible to read on a large 4k screen. The huge headers
and the low contrast makes is very shitty reading experience.

------
iscrewyou
> And don’t worry—you can still organize all your work from the Dropbox folder
> in Windows File Explorer and macOS Finder.

DON’T mess this up, Dropbox. Don’t.

------
mmargerum
Is there some open source version of something like rsync that is available to
just sync between machines on a LAN? No cloud involved.

~~~
butteroverflow
syncthing?

[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

~~~
faitswulff
Does anyone use SyncThing on iOS? Last I heard the support was read only from
a now defunct app called fsync. Thinking about migrating my family over, but
this is a blocker for me.

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lewis1028282
I hate the new website it's so slow. Even the blog took 10s to render, why
does a blog need to be flashy, just show some text.

------
geekamongus
Looks like they introduced a higher price, too.

------
ForzaBlu
Great content for the Emoji Movie sequel :)

------
camdenlock
Oh dear: “It’s more than an app, though—it’s a completely new experience.”

How to tell when designers have taken over a company...

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guggle
Pay more, without my consent, for features I don't care... bye bye dropbox.
Rsync will do.

------
darth_skywalker
Storing a directory as a git repo (e.g. on GitHub) is a pretty good
alternative to Dropbox.

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xu_ituairo
This reminds me of the early web when everyone was obsessed with making one-
stop portals.

------
dvduval
The new Digg redux it seems. They don't seem to have tested the market before
launch.

------
Fiahil
Do they support file versioning ?

~~~
pwenzel
Yes: [https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-
delete/recove...](https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-
delete/recover-older-versions)

------
cabaalis
"We listened to you..." post in 3, 2..

------
dzonga
seems Dropbox is trying to clone an OS. Given that you can do a bunch of
office related stuff inside dropbox

------
tscolari
I've created some much internal hate trying to use their paper and the search
function there that I'm not trying dropbox ever again I think.

------
ReedJessen
The load time on that site is bananas.

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miguelmota
Thought it was April 1st for a second

------
aeonsky
This looks way too much like Jira.

------
pier25
WTF is going on at Dropbox? Are they losing so many users they now need to
make this ridiculous integrations?

~~~
lm28469
Gotta keep your oversized engineering team busy.

Same thing with airbnb, uber, &c. They constantly release side projects that
are forgotten after a month and never used, even internally. Fonts, CSS
frameworks, &c.

------
manojlds
I have a few qualms with this app...

------
randy408
That page took 15 seconds to load

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goodmattg
Does anyone else see "work in progress" at the top of the page?

~~~
dhruvrrp
that is the name of their company blog i think...

~~~
goodmattg
Is there some inside joke to the blog name? I really don't get it...

