Comment by blackbrokkoli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blackbrokkoli | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox current direction just makes me sad.

I struggled with file management for a long time - balancing accessibility from phone, highly effective programming environments, backing up large quantities of not-small photos, that stuff. So I sat down one afternoon, drafted a directory structure, subbed to Dropbox and...it worked so well. Synced my configs between machines, got an Android app which could preview lot's of filetypes, rarely thinking about the whole thing. I always thought of Dropbox quite UNIX-like in a sense, do one thing, but really well.

And then things just kept getting worse. "Checking for changes" on my old shitty VAIO running Ubuntu went from taking 5 minutes to taking half an hour to taking 3 hours and never finishing syncing. Time sensitive file accessing got harder and harder because of continuous UI changes. I tried doing stuff with Smart Sync (or Selective Sync?) but got lost in the complex matrix of which feature does what on what OS with what plan. Webapp keeps nagging me about upgrading, even though I'm literally using less than 5% of my (paid) plan. Come on, show me some valuation as customer, or better, nothing at all.

This got long, so I guess what I'm saying is: Please go back to being a folder that syncs, and I'll be just be ok with your nonchalant mail that you're randomly raising prices.

>Please go back to being a folder that syncs

A simple, effective utility can't support a multi-billion valuation. Where else will the VC Ponzi dollars go?

Isn't the problem that most Dropbox users just won't pay for it?

I've paid for Dropbox for years, but recently cancelled, because I'm uncertain of the direction they're heading in. It's like Evernote of yore.. in fact, I sarcastically think Evernote and Dropbox should merge so I can simplify what I nostalgically ignore to just one entity.

That said, I get Google Drive File Stream with my G Suite company account, and I get Microsoft OneDrive with my Office 365 subscription, and I get 2TB in iCloud with my iCloud subscription. This supports the "feature" idea.

I wasn't thinking about dropping Dropbox until this latest round of product news.

I would have paid for something which worked properly on linux but back when I tried it it didn't. Now I just use google drive or gitlab depending on whether or not I care if anyone else can see it. It's not really worth a lot of my time, money or effort. I'm pretty sure that for many people just doing the same (giving people access by sending them a link via whatsapp/email) is enough.

From the money they burned on Paper, multiple UI changes and that disastrous site redesign of a year or two ago, they'd probably be able to cover the cost of most of users on free plan. Storage isn't that expensive.

Still, I pay. I get increasingly bad service. The only reason I didn't switch yet is that all competitors are strictly worse, and I'm too lazy to set up Syncthing.

The problem isn't that Dropbox users won't pay, clearly they will. Or at least they would when it was simply a useful utility. The problem is that cloud storage is a commodity now, and Dropbox has to meet investor expectations which has been the death of many a perfectly good app.

Which is Dropbox’s fault with their terrible pricing. The next level up is super expensive. Instead of making it a good value and easy they did the opposite.

>A simple, effective utility can't support a multi-billion valuation.

This is the real issue: everyone wants to be a unicorn and no one wants to be a utility.

Well duh.

Right? I feel like you could build a million karma quoting the original poster and saying "Well, duh" on Reddit. Probably lots of bots doing it already.

Which is funny because, if you ask any investor who's been around a few decades, they'll say utilities are the best investment because it's the last thing any person would cut from their budget. (ie. I'd cut my cable subscription before I'd cut my water or power)

That is the real issue, but the symptom of it for Dropbox is that in order for the economics to scale, they have to break out of the commodity space. And cloud storage is now a commodity. That's why they're now willing to risk ruining what used to be a perfectly good app.

Somewhere, Steve Jobs is smiling.

I had the same experience with dropbox. I first started to balk at them when the agent kept sucking more and more memory as updates came, then everything you describe. I ultimately just went all-in with icloud. The pricing is (now) better than dropbox, but I'm also all-in on the Apple ecosystem.

I would be all in on iCloud for sync if it had selective sync. What do you do for that?

https://github.com/Obbut/iCloud-Control

> you are not permitted and will not get permission to list iCloud Control or any derivative work on software catalogue websites like Mac Informer or MacUpdate.

that’s not a legal or enforceable license restriction.

Not my code, not my repo.

i assumed not. just pointing out a foible of the code’s author. it factored into my decision not to use it.

I'm not at all a techie - but I have a question. I'm switching from a Windows + Apple world to just Apple. So I got scared when I read that using Dropbox can mess up your photos when using Apple's "Photos" program which I have always avoided. https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/comments/dont_store_your_phot... Anyway, I love Selective Sync - esp for photos. So there is not a solution to the iCloud problem?

I've found pCloud to do just that, focus on sync, encryption, security and performance (consistent ~10MB/s up/down for me).

They even do automatic backups of other cloud providers like OneDrive, Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram and Google Drive.

Lately there's a plugin to backup an entire Wordpress site, directly to pCloud.

"I always thought of Dropbox quite UNIX-like in a sense, do one thing, but really well."

From our platform page[1]:

"We believe in the UNIX philosophy and we want rsync.net to be a simple primitive that you can quickly plug into your workflow."

We would be very happy to have you.

[1] https://www.rsync.net/platform.html

You really should opt in to try the new client. I have. It’s identical to before unless you want to use the new file browser for search or something else it can remain closed.

Have you tried rsync.net? I’ve heard good things about them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com