Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile
cloudrail.com
cloudrail.com
I guess I'm not sure what to make of some unknown-to-me company's study on usage of its own SDK for cloud storage; and this study being posted in 'news release'-style on their blog. To me, these are huge grains of salt.
Adding this layer of middleware is just another layer of complexity for us.
That doesn't include Amazon's unlimited free storage for photos with our family prime account.
Oh, and a 1 TB Western Digital personal cloud drive...
I don't think you can compare iCloud with general purpose storage; it seems angled towards iOS app integrations instead.
It's really handy - I've pretty much stopped using Dropbox, except to share files with people on other platforms.
With a few (and lessening) limitations, iCloud is becoming the general user-accessible filesystem that iOS has lacked since the beginning.
All that's needed now is a download manager in safari.
On iOS, the iCloud Drive app lets you see everything in iCloud storage as well.
Certainly iOS app integration is important in iCloud, but it functions perfectly well for any other use too.
Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the free accounts and the accounts that max out their paid storage.
I don't know why people put up with it?
Put aside all the concerns over War Crimes or Spying, or Security, Dropbox simply works. Every mobile platform is supported. Every desktop platform is supported. Sharing, Teams, direct links, all the core features are there. Anyone can safely recommend and share Dropbox files with their Grandma (with a PC still running XP), or their Mac loving parents, or their weird hipster friend running Gentoo GNU/Linux, and Dropbox will still work.
A lot of HN prioritizes things like data security or political signaling over frictionless implementations. Sure you can get secure file synchronization with rsync and ssh keys, but the average consumer has never even seen a terminal. I'm sure security and politics are important when selling to other tech users, but Dropbox is general consumer facing, and they have succeeded at their task, making flash drives obsolete.
We're working on an alternative: https://www.sync.com/your-privacy/
If the service provider controls the code in the client (as you do), the fact is the service provider definitely can access the data, you're just choosing not to.
I don't think there is much difference between encrypting client-side when you control the client, and encrypting server-side before storage. Either way you have encryption-at-rest.
Overall though I would agree that you can't trust it much, because some code is downloaded from the server and then you trust that code (which can communicate with the server) with the key... Perhaps if it was in a local sandbox whose policies were enforced in a browser pref, or there was taint analysis applied to sensitive local data.
In years to come people will snicker at how wide open and insecure things were back in 201x.
But just because you encrypt server side doesn't mean you store keys.
What's the difference between:
1. Get key from user on client
2. Encrypt on client
3. Discard key
4. Discard unencrypted data
5. Send encrypted data to server
6. Store encrypted data
1. Get key from user on client
2. Send key and data to server over SSL
3. Encrypt on server in response handler
4. Discard key
5. Discard unencrypted data
6. Store encrypted data
Big picture: either way the developer sees the key and the unencrypted data. Either way, you are completely trusting the competence of the developer at implementing this scheme, and their trustworthiness with the key and unencrypted data.
There is no such thing as "host-proof" encryption as long as the client is provided by the host.
Will you have a Linux client? (I'm sure that's the least favorite question new services like this get.)
I ripped Dropbox out by the roots on all of my systems some time back because of the contempt they display for their users. New, more privacy- and security-conscious services are nice (as are ones that don't break their users' machines and then go weaselly when caught). But I really want the option to use my own infrastructure for apps that want to store data somewhere remote.
Especially for file-based services, the only argument for Dropbox is "because they're big and probably already installed"[2]. I'd deeply appreciate it if these sorts of apps would add a preference-pane for scp, at least. I have no idea if the crusty-folks-like-me market is big enough to constitute a noticeable bump in app store sales or not, but I promise, given two competing apps, I'll forgive a lot of other warts in and pay more for the one that lets me own my own data.
[1] I know cloud is king, but there are a lot of us out here that want to own our own data, rather than having the cloud-overlords rent it back to us. The Omnigroup's apps are great examples of this - you can use their sync servers, but you can also (and I do) run your own WebDAV server for it. Works great, and I have paid the Omnigroup substantially more than any other single mobile app vendor for their apps.
[2] Synchronization is difficult enough in some contexts that I completely get writing something more complicated there, but then we're not talking about Dropbox or their competitors anymore.
I'm pretty firmly in the if-can't-self-host-i-don't-care camp (which rules out Dropbox and drive alike) - but I've recently had reason to share documents at work, without any in-house infrastructure. And the combination of "good enough" Google docs and sheets along with easy to use drive on laptop/desktop/mobile is hard to beat - especially with a pretty easy learning curve.
I only whish drive had the ability to mark a "folder" as available offline, as the fiction of 4g everywhere gets a bit tiresome when you find yourself on a mountain and need to pull up your list of students to make sure you haven't left someone to bleed out on the way up (ok, for that you practice the buddy system and have a paper backup. But it's still nice to work on notes offline wherever you are and have them sync, without offline-first being something special).
Linux. I'd love to use Google Drive since I have more space available there, but all the Linux clients for Drive suck since none of them is official and don't have as much features as the Dropbox client.
Not every. Dropbox doesn't work on FreeBSD. But mobile client probably the best.
This might have been obviated by some share nonsense I did with iPhotos. Dropbox seems to be working better and better.
Available offline is the killer feature of both Dropbox and Drive. You still cannot depend on connectivity, and have to plan ahead with critical documents. It becomes part of your travel routine.
As soon as you try their competitors (Drive, Box, iCloud) you find out just how utterly crappy they are as soon as you need to share files with other people. Dropbox does it seamlessly. Bankrolling free accounts so students can have their thesis backed up is a small price to pay for that.
Aside from the price, Dropbox just works. Android, iPhone, my Macbook Pros, my wife's Windows 10 laptop -- no problems, it just does what we expect it to.
I've looked at other solutions, even signed up for the trial of OneDrive (got burned on their filename length limit, oddly enough), and decided Dropbox works well enough to keep. I reevaluate every year and I'm perfectly willing to move when someone comes along that is conclusively better. They all match each other pretty quickly on pricing, so it's reliability (first) and features (second) that get my wallet to open.
It's cheap enough that I can use it as a cloud copy or a second cloud copy, and I never have to worry about losing photos again.
For people who value privacy a lot, maybe Google Photos might not be a nice option. I should note that one can choose whether to share photos with other people or not on Google Photos.
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For example, it irks me that Google Drive is a catch-all storage space for Google products; sometimes all you want is a dumb folder that just syncs up and down whatever you put into it and Dropbox (and Box) give that to you without any mandatory integrations that benefit the companies that bankroll the storage (Google Drive, OneDrive), but not necessarily you.
It's also nice that Dropbox treats every platform as a first-class citizen. It's pretty obvious that some storage products are a just pieces of a larger puzzle that you happen to be able to use as a cloud drive, while some other companies make it clear that offering a cloud drive is their primary business.
Dropbox also does file versioning. You get an addon and it does versioning for a year. You cannot speak of having backups without this feature and iCloud doesn't. Get a ransomeware on your computer and you'll see what I'm talking about ;-)
And also, once you get in the habit of saving stuff, 1 TB is really not that much. My personal photo/video archive is 90 GB. I have another 20 GB of online presentations I gave to colleagues, archived just in case, about 10 GB of music, 30 GB of movies (mostly for my son, as he'd be really upset without his favorites), recovery stuff, project backups, all in all I exceed 200 GB. Actually at the rate I'm growing, 1 TB might soon be insufficient.
I also understand the reluctance to pay for stuff, but personally I think my data deserves the price of 2-3 coffees per month. My personal email deserves another coffee or two.
I've been using iCloud Drive recently, and it works pretty well. Maybe if Apple ever gets around to releasing new Macs they'll bump the default storage level and cover more people because as it stands it's at 5GB which isn't competitive anymore.
Whenever I deal with data I want to access on a file level and not through apps, like documents, photos, etc. I use Dropbox. And since I have to backup my music library (500 GB) somewhere anyway, I'll gladly use Dropbox Pro tier. Yes, I could save 3 bucks by using Amazon Cloud Drive or other services, but Dropbox' user experience and thoughtful design is second to none.
My use of dropbox has grown - but I primarily used it to store and retrieve a lot of data that I was analyzing when did my PhD. The data were several 100 GB in size. The 1 TB solution came quite handy. I also moved between my mac & linux during that time. I just had my files when I needed them.
But... the iCloud Drive function is immature and unreliable.
Right now, I subscribe to Dropbox Pro and iCloud. I'll probably drop Dropbox as their photo story sucks, and they don't make key features available to "Pro" users like full text search.
But iCloud is the sleeper. In particular, Notes seems to be open on my desktop and all my devices. A terrific application.
Lock-in? Once you have a few gigs up on Dropbox, it's a bit of a challenge transferring it elsewhere.
The few times I tried to use Drive, it was considerably more hassle to work with (and slow), iCloud was right out because it's Apple-platforms only, and my experiences with OneNote's sync issues makes me wary of trying OneDrive. Haven't looked at Box since I was under the impression it was aimed at businesses/enterprise more than individuals.
That has been the only cloud storage provider good enough (but not as good as) Dropbox to wean me away from DB. I've been using it for a couple of months now.
A totally different way to read this would be Dropbox needs the most help from 3rd parties. Another would be that Dropbox is the platform that people build for the most.
iCloud may be easier and is the probable successor, but Apple has only recently gotten its cloud game together and its free option is only 5GB.
Eventually the platforms are going to make using a third party obsolete (arguably already so on Android) so I predict we're at peak Dropbox usage. Especially considering Google's new Pixel phones will store all photos at full resolution for free, I'm sure Apple will at least have to increase their free storage tier.
That's hard to do without a filesystem or proper Intents.
iOS has neither, so people use Dropbox as filesystem.
Dropbox is the only service (I know of) that supports Linux. While it may not affect you directly, it does affect who you can interoperate with. For example in a startup with developers using Linux, you'll need something that works for them too.
That's three major questions begged in a single sentence, followed by 3 more in the next. Perhaps if you tried to back up each of those claims, you'd have an easier time understanding.
“Poor business model” would be the first place to start since Dropbox has ton of users and they tend to be loyal: learning why would tell you whether you're making the right comparisons.
“Security” is a judgement call but it's certainly not true that this is accepted conventional wisdom. Sure, there's the occasional hyperbolic blog post which makes the rounds before someone looks into the details and debunks the conspiracy theories but Apple and Google certainly get those, too.
Continuing the trend, the pricing also does not support your claims:
Google:
1TB = $9.99/mo (https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375123?hl=en)
Dropbox:
1TB = $9.99/mo (https://www.dropbox.com/plans)
Apple:
1TB = $9.99/mo (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238)
Even if the pricing wasn't the same for all three services, that's a relatively small amount of money to pay for a service which many people rely on heavily and you couldn't say anything meaningful about pricing without talking about the different features. If you valued a particular feature or related service (e.g. Google Photos, Dropbox's cross-platform support & integration with a wide range of mobile apps, etc.) many people will consider it worth paying a small amount more per month to get their favorite choice – we're talking numbers well under what many people spend at Starbucks in the same time-period, after all.
One point in particular you should think about is the reason why I've heard so many non-IT people favor Dropbox: it's easy to setup, syncs reliably (as opposed to iCloud's same-week synchronization), and they always have a full copy of their data on every computer. It's really easy to forget how much people value the idea that they will never be in the case where a network error or billing screwup prevents them from accessing their files. That doesn't have to be a common event for people to want to avoid it.
Security: If you think that's a judgement call, fine, if you think that the dropbox hack is a judgment issue.
Pricing: For Joe Bloggs, 100GB is generally enough. Google handily offers that for $2. With Dropbox, there's a cliff - a few gig for free or a terabyte for $10/m. Why no middle ground? Both Apple and Google offer scaled plans, why doesn't Dropbox?
Okay, that's a start, do you think you can explain some of the analysis backing the opinion which you assumed everyone else shared?
> Security: If you think that's a judgement call, fine, if you think that the dropbox hack is a judgment issue.
If we stopped using any company which has had a security problem, we wouldn't be using computers. That's why I said it was a judgement call: one incident years ago is not much of a trend line so different people might reasonably have different comfort levels.
> Pricing: For Joe Bloggs, 100GB is generally enough. Google handily offers that for $2. With Dropbox, there's a cliff - a few gig for free or a terabyte for $10/m. Why no middle ground? Both Apple and Google offer scaled plans, why doesn't Dropbox?
Oh, now there's a valid question about the business model: perhaps they should have a middle tier. That's what you should have said instead of claiming that Dropbox was more expensive or whatever “the storage for the price just doesn't add up” was supposed to mean.
Dropbox reportedly had to move 500PB of data off of AWS which at a very naive $0.03 per GB per month would only be around $180MM per year. $0.03 is probably higher than the rate dropbox pays per GB but I'm ignoring network ingress/egress costs.
From those back of the envelope calculations I think it's safe to say that iCloud is very likely larger, or at least a similar size to Dropbox.
https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/03/magic-pocket-infrastr...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3045436/data-center-cloud/app...
Therefore, regardless of manual input necessary, it should still count as usage. I imagine a lot of people store backups on Dropbox, and that looks like it's counted in the article.
Yet, I am kind of surprised that the prevalence of Android software doesn't correlate to Google Drive market share.
e.g. Verizon has their own cloud storage service.... it's annoying on Android, not sure if it exists on iOS.