Lots of negativity in here, but I'll say I really enjoy how incredibly simple Dropbox is and has remained since it launched.
It's so easy to explain how it works to my non-techie parents ("It's just another folder on your computer, except it backs up your data automatically").
Hacker News has always been negative towards Dropbox. Dropbox was dismissed since day one around here. Still they continue to grow in leaps and bounds. At some stage, we must just admit that we don't understand Dropbox as a business. They are solving a problem that we take for granted because we are techies. I also wish they continue to succeed.
I mean, I don't really agree with Dropbox strategy if their goal is to continue growing, but I want to say congrats on the progress toward IPO. I sense it's been a long time coming. I saw Drew Houston talking to Sam Altman and talking about the books he reads and his approach to things. I have something of a new sort of respect for the guy. He strikes me as someone whose best ideas are still ahead of him. Like someone who found himself in a world far beyond his ken, and is now learning and incubating to make the next big move. I certainly hope that's the case, for Dropbox's future strategy to make it long term viable ( if long term viability is a workable goal for the Dropbox stakeholders ).
I don't know how to reconcile the negativity toward Dropbox with how what Dropbox did was very very technical and hacker-ish. Basically they spent 5 years just tracking down obscure operating system bugs and making their app work seamlessly across all platforms. I mean they really did the hard slog. A kind of slog I thought technical people here would respect.
If I really look into it I'd have to say the negativity here toward Dropbox stems from people thinking, "But I could do that! But I do that already!" And sort of having this bitterness that something so "their-territory" was done successfully by someone else. But I think, "don't they realize the hard slog Dropbox did to actually make that work everywhere?" I think in the case of Dropbox, it was that obsession with the details, that is a driving force of their culture and business. If people fail to appreciate that, and are negative based on the impression they get with that obsession omitted, they're not seeing Dropbox clearly, in my opinion.
I agree. It just works, and it works really well. My only complaint is that they don't yet have Smart Sync [1] (aka Project Infinite) for premium home users.
I love it though, and I use Cryptomater [2] to sync my docs folder across machines without having it be on Dropbox's servers in the clear.
I like the cross platform support. Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, it works on all of my devices. I'd be afraid that platform specific sync options (iCloud, OneDrive, etc...) would neglect their software client on competing platforms.
But, at least on Windows, only being able to sync 1 folder is a serious limitation.
Again at least on Windows, CPU and disk utilisation goes through the roofnon start-up, rendering your machine all but useless for half an hour.
And the final nail in my Dropbox coffin - it seemed to quite often choose the wrong file when there were conflicts, and at times it mistakenly deleted a lot if files. I just couldn't trust it.
Oh, and support via their forums was rubbish. Dozens of people would report the same problems, and they'd be ignored for years.
Every other sync service I've tried has major bugs, from Google Drive URL-encoding the filenames in an entire directory tree and deleting the original to Bittorrent Sync silently corrupting large files...
Funnily enough, I used to use OneDrive OneDrive (SkyDrive back then) with symlinks and it had a bug in its earlier version that basically fucked up your backups if you used symlinks and upgraded OneDrive. It ended up creating file_1 file_2 etc multiple versions of all my files and was a pain to sort through.
It's so easy to explain how it works to my non-techie parents ("It's just another folder on your computer, except it backs up your data automatically").
I hope Dropbox continues to thrive.