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Comment by musicale | Hacker News Reader

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musicale·

I tend to think of Files as less like Dropbox and more like the macOS Finder.

You can actually browse Dropbox in Files, much as you can in the Finder, although there are some limitations.

https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/mobile/ios-fi...

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I never had to go to the Mac App Store to download Finder though.

Oddly I had to on my new iPad Pro. Wasn’t there.

iPad != Mac

Huge face palm!

If you did have to download Finder from the Mac App Store, would that turn Finder into a competitor of Dropbox?

Only if it means that Finder doesn’t have any special system access privileges - or that Dropbox can do everything Finder can - so Finder and Dropbox would be on equal-footing.

I'll give my opinion as a consumer.

Sometime in early 2019, I bought an iPad (pre ipad OS). I went to a website and downloaded a journal PDF. I had no idea where the file was physically located. Safari didn't provide an indication, and there didn't appear to be a File Manager of any kind built in. So I had to search online for an app, just to locate a a file I had downloaded through the browser.

I returned the iPad and went back to Android, which has had file explorers built in since forever (both stock Android or OEM skin). "It just works".

I believe Files was integrated into iOS on release, but even system-integrated apps have entries on the App store to say re-add them after being removed by the user.

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