Who cares? 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.
In general, not sure if we should keep posting this about every Dropbox mention. Comments like this is hardly intellectually stimulating and might fit better at Reddit rather than HN.
Agreed, I hadn't seen anything on this subject before and wasn't aware it was a copypasta response. I get that hn doesn't want to turn into the cesspool of inside jokes that reddit has become, but a quick jab like this here and there never hurts, imo
I think it's a great reminder that 99% of these startups are really just scaled versions of free technology you already have. Maybe it's a little grating to hear if you're a Dropbox founder, but FTP is natively supported on Apple Silicon while Dropbox is not...
This is ridiculous. The features and interface dropbox offers are so far beyond the “solution” outlined here. And it is relevant that this stuff doesn’t work natively on Apple‘s new silicon. Because it kills the battery if it has to go through the Rosetta translation layer. The point here is that you have a public tech company that has one job, which is to support consumer cloud storage, and a big chunk of that consumer base is running on apple silicon, and their response is acting like they have no reasonable priority or responsibility to port to Apple silicon, despite that it has been out for one year and the interim solution is just that: a temporary, interim Rosetta translation.
> a big chunk of that consumer base is running on apple silicon
Here I was thinking that most Dropbox customers (at least the ones that pay big money) were on Windows, but maybe I'm wrong. Since you seem to have insights into Dropbox's userbase, could you share the raw numbers you're sitting on? Percentage wise of course.
I don’t know what the numbers are, but most Mac users I personally know are using the service. Although I suspect that’s going to change, at least in my own personal case, if they don’t get this resolved.
Seems to be a huge leap to go from "Most people I know use Dropbox" to "Big chunk of their customer base is macOS", when you have zero insight into Dropbox.
It’s not a leap. The Mac is a major platform, and Apple silicon is soon to be the only Mac platform. All the other cloud storage providers in this service space are offering support for Apple silicon.
Now is it as significant as windows users? I’m sure it is not. But it seems silly that a major tech company would just dismiss it altogether.
> The Mac is a major platform, and Apple silicon is soon to be the only Mac platform
Macs are ~15% of the market, and Apple silicon is a subgroup of that which will gradually increase until it makes up virtually the whole group over a timespan of several years (basically, how long do people keep machines running). It will never be the only mac platform unless you mean supported platform, which will still take quite a few years.
So no: Macs, and Macs on Apple silicon, are a part of the market, but they're a fraction and a fraction of a fraction.
In some places. In others no. Depends on the industry really, and country.
> But it seems silly that a major tech company would just dismiss it altogether
We don't know how Dropbox's userbase looks like. If most of their profits come from large enterprises on Windows, then they will focus on those users mostly, since Dropbox is a company and companies always (most of the time) just follow the money.
Note that you have now shifted the goal post to the future tense :/. The reality is that Apple Silicon only started shipping only in a subset of Apple laptops... they currently--which is all that matters, as in the future Dropbox isn't somehow prevented from compiling their software to be "native" Apple Silicon if that somehow actually matters in an important way--aren't a big chunk of anything, including macOS users.
Part of it's enduring quality is how we can all relate to being so retrospectively wrong like this (I know I can! A/B tests are a constant reminder). I think bringing it up now and then is a gentle reminder to keep a positive community :)
This is a ridiculously simplistic view of things, to the point where it's not really worth any merit.
Mounting (s)ftp(s) and using it as a local folder does some things, but fails at the basics. Eg, if I upload a 50gb file (and actually manage to get it to upload all the way without crashing), how can I checksum verify what I uploaded without it costing me 50gb in downloading and time?
There's plenty more edgecases, but suffice to say, there's a reason why tools like rclone & rsync exist - copy and paste does not cut it for a lot of uses, especially when mixing large files, remote servers and (even good) internet connections.
I totally missed the sarcasm - sorry, I'm far more used to it on other platforms than here. I also spent a few days fighting with <cloud storage provider> uploads from our NAS recently, so I'm a little bitter ;)
bravo, we should start a similar copypasta with Android users since many talk like that too, except it ends with their phone exploding when they try it
This reminds me of an old episode of The Screen Savers where RMS was interviewed. This was when BitKeeper was very popular, but not yet open source, and Git did not exist. RMS was questioned about this and his immediate response was "just use UUCP"
