As fun as consumer services are most people aren't going to pay for them (or will pay very little). The real value in these types of services are Power Users and Business.
As someone who considers himself a power user and who runs IT for a business I can tell you Dropbox has been very effective in its marketing. We use Box.net and my users are constantly pushing for Dropbox because they use it at home and find it preferable. If Dropbox had the features we probably would have switched by now.
Same with Power Users in that word of mouth is likely to influence these people (though again I'd argue features in that the streaming ability of SugarSync is a real advantage for those users).
So as crazy as it seems Dropbox is essentially using you for marketing. Think about it, companies pay millions for a couple minutes of Superbowl time. With that money Dropbox gives millions of users a free service and uses word of mouth to carry it along.
The upside for dropbox is you commenting here that you are using them and that their free tier is usable, so you are effectively a part of their marketing arm.
If you really get utility out of dropbox then it is in your best interest that they continue to exist. Sooner or later that might translate into you pulling your wallet.
Freemium offerings are predicated on statistics and dropbox seems to be doing just fine in spite of the freeloading nature of some of their customers.
Yes, it is a feature if you've already got an OS and a bunch of devices out there.
But it is a product if you can do this seamlessly across all os's, and all devices.
Both perspectives are equally valid in this case. In the end to the DropBox guys their product vision was worth more to them than Jobs' feature vision allowed him to pay for it.
Time will tell if that was the right decision, for either party.
Dropbox gets money from you paying for dropbox (it's a service), Apple gets money from you buying Apple hardware, iCloud is just there to give you reason to get Apple devices and keep buying Apple devices.
> Freemium offerings are predicated on statistics and dropbox seems to be doing just fine in spite of the freeloading nature of some of their customers.
Absolutely, but Dropbox's goal will still be to push you on the "premium" side of "freemium".
I have gotten my whole team on it - we have a virtual team of 10 consultants all working from our homes. Dropbox is key to keeping everything between us shared.
We haven't yet gone for the Team account - but we will be doing so shortly. It is expensive - but the simplicity and value it offers it (so far) unmatched.
None of my data is life and death critical - so I dont fret too much about security.
I expect that Dropbox will get better, and the service is just invaluable to how we work.
You have files on the cloud and get version control for free.
Unless of course all your stuff is huge binaries and you don't care about versioning.