I wonder if anyone has the ability to understand and use dropbox this way but isn't able to mount network shares. I feel like anyone who would use this would see it as worse than usual. Dropbox and it's clones are great, and it's good to see this convenience available to a more mainstream audience.
But as someone who has used sshfs for years to get seamless access to all my boxes from wherever I am I'm certainly not getting excited about some kind of crippled filesystem-over-http fad. It took mobile to remind people that the internet is good for more than just the web but I don't see that trend stopping (even if we do have to start calling software "native apps")
The web's great, but this everything-in-the-browser silliness means people are using crappier tools than they used to have. I find it annoying but practically it's just not a stable state of affairs because it's so easy to change.
I believe the issue is that web development is normally far easier than the alternatives.
So, some ideas are tested in the web, and if they are successful and they benefit from going native, they will be reimplemented in a more close to the metal way. Or not.
GoogleDocs -> Dropbox
VVVVVVV in flash -> VVVVVVVV in C
Some future game in WebGL at 5 FPS -> Same native game at 120FPS with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.
This seems to conflict: "The web's great, but this everything-in-the-browser silliness means people are using crappier tools than they used to have."
... with your sentiment on the original post; that it was pointing out how Dropbox integration lets people get out of the browser and use the tools they might be more comfortable with...
Are you for, or against APIs to connect web and desktop and mobile?
That was unclear. The reason I grouped the dropbox API in there is that it is an HTTP REST API. Good for a lot of things, but to layer a filesystem on top of it is complex and doesn't fit well.
It's a natural extension but it's reinventing the wheel poorly. That happens all the time as things progress. Wheels are reinvented on the new platforms. Normally the new method either pulls ahead quickly or is replaced by an update of the old one. I don't think a good enough implementation of a filesystem over HTTP is easy, and it will at least have to be bloated. A good web aware wrapper around existing filesystem sharing stuff would be much better, sooner of later someone will do that or something even better because they're so clever.
tldr; I like the idea of API's and having internet aware applications for things a browser isn't suited for, and non-http protocols for the things HTTP isn't well suited for. This API strikes me as a poor direction for major development on top of, but makes sense since dropbox is already there and useful.
But as someone who has used sshfs for years to get seamless access to all my boxes from wherever I am I'm certainly not getting excited about some kind of crippled filesystem-over-http fad. It took mobile to remind people that the internet is good for more than just the web but I don't see that trend stopping (even if we do have to start calling software "native apps")
The web's great, but this everything-in-the-browser silliness means people are using crappier tools than they used to have. I find it annoying but practically it's just not a stable state of affairs because it's so easy to change.