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Comment by synaesthesisx | Hacker News Reader

If I had anything to do with Dropbox I'd be scrambling to cash out ASAP.

It’s a matter of time before Apple rolls out iCloud file/folder sharing (which currently exists in some form already). In addition, they recently announced iMessage "Business Chat" which will likely later include other enterprise functionality.

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> It’s a matter of time before Apple rolls out iCloud file/folder sharing

And that solution won't work on my work-machine running Windows, nor on my home-machines running Linux.

Nor on any machine owned by anyone in my greater family. Because most people don't have Macs.

It will be completely irrelevant outside some niche Apple-only circles. Like most services Apple make.

I'd be surprised if it disrupted Dropbox noticeably.

Microsoft might follow Apple's lead of OS developers including cloud sync. That's gonna leave a mark on Dropbox's business.

That would be a much more serious contender, yes.

But an Apple-only offering? Not at all.

I'd guess that Dropbox make most of their revenue from businesses that have large numbers of different computers. If you have a network of computers all running the same OS then sharing and sync'ing is relatively easy; Dropbox solves the pain where you don't have that. Any service that's Apple-only, or Windows-only, or even just perceived to be limited to a particular OS, isn't going to have much of an impact on Dropbox's bottom line.

There's value in cross-platform, sure. I stuck with Dropbox because they have Linux and Mac clients.

But aren't there whole government departments and other very big customers that are pretty much single-platform, usually Windows?

> But aren't there whole government departments and other very big customers that are pretty much single-platform, usually Windows?

Would be interesting to know how much that class of customer uses services like this. I would assume primarily as part of a bigger package (e.g. if it comes with Office365 or Google Suite (or whatever that is called right now))?

> Microsoft might follow Apple's lead of OS developers including cloud sync.

You mean OneDrive?

Yeah, I guess so. It's had so little impact on my world that I forgot all about it.

But in the real world, no one has done it better then Dropbox for simple store and sync. Which is sad but true. iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, GDrive, Box aren't any good at all. Dropbox is only better because all of their competition aren't great.

I have six 2.5" HDD sitting here, along with two 3.5" HDD, all with photos, video, files etc, many are duplicated. There are currently no easy way to sort through this mess. I have to sort it locally before I store it online. Why cant I dump it all to the Cloud and let the sorting happen there?

I've been contemplating building such a thing, but without (or making very optional) the Cloud aspect. Not sure whether or how it could be monetised, especially if I also wanted it to be open source.

Essentially this is what NAS from Synology or Qnap should have offered in the first place.

Monetizing it by reselling the Cloud Storage space? ( Using B2 from Black Blaze ) But i really think it is a feature rather then a product.

>It’s a matter of time before Apple rolls out iCloud file/folder sharing

This is still unusable on PC and likely to be just as bad as iTunes was for years if it gets rolled out to Windows.

People have been saying this for years now. Yet here we are and Dropbox still is the most polished product, even compared to big names like Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

I think your statement is correct but example is not very good. Majority of Dropbox users are using Windows. Perhaps if Azure were to come out with Dropbox-like functionality this would be more apt. (I'm sure that Azure has at least some Dropbox-like functionality but is still a distance away from replacing Dropbox)

Microsoft OneDrive for Business is moving in that direction. Online collaboration of Office files, couple of clicks sharing and security controls that Enterprise IT departments love. I'd still say Dropbox is easier to use with a cleaner interface. However with so many Fortune 500 Enterprises already in bed with Microsoft, OneDrive for Business has a leg up.

Ignoring OneDrive for the moment, Azure File Storage is rather cool as it doesn't work by synchronizing copies of files it is literally a cloud based SMB drive:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/files/

It's not terribly user friendly at the moment - I have wondered if there is a market for a nice easy to use front end for it...

I use it for mirroring a significant percentage of my disk across Mac, Windows, Linux, and Android. There's no way I'd ever drop it for one brought out by a platform vendor, especially not one brought out by Apple.

iCloud has one of the worst user-experiences I've ever had of any mainstream product from a major provider. I'm not a tech dunce, but I just couldn't "get" it

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