Why Dropbox Is A Major Disruption
abovethecrowd.com
abovethecrowd.com
It changed the way I work with files. And it's all the client.
Before Dropbox my options for sharing a file with someone were all cumbersome:
- CD/DVD/Hard Drive/USB Stick. Unless they're not within 10 miles of me, then it's a total non starter.
- Email it. Except if it was too large, it would cause a litany of problems with mail servers.
- Toss is up on an FTP. Clunky. FTP is an awful protocol.
- Any of a dozen file sharing websites that I've never particularity trusted, and some of which require the person receiving the file to follow some directions or have an account. No. Just no. The portals for uploading are clunky.
Then Dropbox happened.
- Public folders? Genius. Doesn't change my workflow at all, just slap it in to the folder and copy a link that I can share with anyone. No accounts required on the other end.
- Shared folders? Changed how I work forever. Not only do I get an affiliate bump every time I get someone on the plan, but then it makes the process for THEM sending ME a file brain dead simple. I have the luxury of having access to an FTP account and knowing how to use it. Some of my clients and friends do not. Nor do I expect them to, or even want them to. FTP sucks.
Just today I went over five iterations of a design in real time with a friend, and all he had to do was stick a JPG in a folder. He didn't even have to tell me, I got a notification and everything. Awesome!
- Photos folder? Now I can just drop pics from my SD card and shoot an email to Mom. No clunky website, uploading, naming, organizing, configuring, and then finally sending. Just photos, copy to Dropbox folder, send her a link, done. Moms happy. I'm happy.
Do you notice a theme between those three things? They all get the hell out of my way. Every other offering on the planet wants to ask me things and do things and make the cloud storage process cumbersome and heavy. Dropbox, I move files in to a folder and it takes care of shit. It allows anyone -- regardless of experience level -- to leverage the power of a basic version control and synchronization system without lifting a finger.
THAT is the secret. Not that it's cloud. Not that it's hip. Not right place or time. Not hardware/software disassociation philosophic nonsense. It works. And it doesn't get in your way to get that work done. I don't even have any USB sticks anymore, and I don't care. Why go to the trouble of plugging in a device when I could just copy it to a folder?
No one can argue against that it's extremely well supported on the client-side and pushing files to a server (with ssh for example) or hosting a small http-server locally (twistd for example) is usually no big problem.
I believe the "client" in this case was "customer". Getting somebody to right click on a folder and selecting 'share in dropbox' is the easiest thing that I can ask of somebody. All files within that folder will be visible to me, even if they make changes.
Another key thing with dropbox is that it made sharing files easier by allowing you to share folders. I, for one, going through the attach -> browse -> open dialogue for each photo I wanted to show to somebody.
If I had to change anything I was already doing to use Dropbox, I wouldn't have even given it a first thought, let alone a second thought, least of all my $10. And in your example it is the "client" that makes it so easy for the "customer" to get them to share files with you.
I've got a web server. Or I could host one locally. But it's all just so cumbersome and unwieldy for what should be a simple task. Take a file. Push it from Point A to Point B. But I'm technically competent enough to set up all that stuff and wrangle with it. Someone else who just wants to share some files, maybe not so much.
Realistically? I'm serving them via HTTP now when I use my Public folder. But the process for getting the file to the person I want to share it with has been grossly simplified.
Just because I am technically competent enough to go through a detailed process to share a file doesn't mean it's a good User Experience. I enjoy working on and maintaining this stuff, but it can still be frustrating. Dropbox makes it painless. Almost effortless.
That's the greatest feature.
I can configure and use sftp, run nginx to serve that content over http, generate links en masse and send them over e-mail, throw a simple gallery software on top to showcase photos. Dropbox makes it a all just a little easier, just a little better with automatic backup, versioning and shell integration.
But it absolutely kills when it comes to collaborating with people who don't run a Linux server as a hobby. Publishing is easy, sharing is easier, overwritten or mistakenly deleted files are not a problem. It truly just works.
And it's so much better than other solutions. Do you know what many (many!) groups at my university use to share files, notes, previous tests, etc? A shared e-mail account -- an e-mail account to which everyone knows the password. With all the accompanying drama when someone misconfigures their e-mail client and deletes everything while downloading over pop3, or forgets to log out and then everyone can go through their search history.
I strongly disagree with this. Dropbox is great, but it only affects a subset of my experience on any given hardware/software platform. Dropbox cannot change the aesthetic of Android in a way that would make me chose it over iOS. Likewise for OS X and Windows. Dropbox cannot change a cheap, plastic Acer laptop in to a unibody MacBook Air. If you care about these things, the statement above is proven false for your use case.
"State" is plumbing; Dropbox is plumbing. It's damn good plumbing, but it's plumbing none the less.
I think maybe the author is struggling with how to frame the disruption. I know I am. To say that Dropbox is damn good plumbing is not an admonishment. I don't want to live without damn good plumbing.
The best technology is transparent -- no, invisible. I use 1Password. I have two laptops, an iPad, and an iPhone. I don't have to think about syncing passwords between these devices. It "just happens". I don't see Dropbox working in the background with 1Password to sync my passwords, but I know it's responsible. Here's the rub:
Apple isn't the facilitator of this magic, and that is the disruption.
What do we call this though? It's not the OS. It's not the hardware. It's something new. Some call it the "platform", but what is that? Everything is a platform.
Apple created iCloud as a "platform". iCloud provides the plumbing for my contacts, calendars, apps, music, etc. Everyone expects them to expand this to include third-party services. Google has Gmail. Windows has (had) Live. The trouble for Dropbox is that Apple/Google/Microsoft hold the keys to the user's data. These three players have to individually agree to allow Dropbox in to their ecosystem, and they all know that this act would commoditize their platform. I think Dropbox is going to have a really tough time making inroads there. I don't see any of these vendors making the "cloud platform" interchangeable on their respective devices/OS.
But Re: Apple/Google/Microsoft not permitting Dropbox to invade the "office": it used to be just Microsoft. In fact, for many companies, it still is.
Google is trying to carve out a piece of the action. They don't want to always be a search company that has some other red-headed step-projects. They've got their office suite, their OS, their browser, and their plan for world domination (ok, maybe).
Apple is trying to create their own walled garden. But in "the office," that just means things like VMWare. In many ways, Apple positioned themselves where Microsoft was trying to go. Now they are faced with the difficult challenge of out-Microsofting Microsoft to capture the hold-outs.
So will Dropbox "kill" Microsoft? No. (To clarify, none of Microsoft's competitors are going to be the stake to the heart.) Dropbox is a sync+backup service. I'm not disagreeing with the article: there's plenty of room for them to grow.
But only Microsoft can kill Microsoft.
Also, could you call the "magic" a harbor? Harbor's allow anything to dock and trade regardless of their size, shape, or origin. Only half joking.
You are dead on about the barriers of entry though. There are goliath industries out there that will defend there profits to the death, rather than pivot or expand. Not so much the big 3 in my mind, but all of the supporting companies and service providers.
The author really does believe that "state" is where Dropbox is headed, but I believe there are significant barriers there. Short of an anti-trust suit, I don't see that barrier coming down, which is going to be a significant impediment to Dropbox's ability to offer a "cross-platform" solution.
I suppose they weren't around for diskless workstations. But diskless workstations weren't around for 3G and now 4G/LTE network access.
Its an interesting trend, but as anyone who has tried to use their android phone to navigate when there is no network service, well they just can't. The network may not really be the computer (old Sun joke) but you can make it uncomfortably necessary.
You also put more of your productivity into the hands of the network provider, and that is never good. Sure when the network is pervasive and can't be monopolized by a single provider it will be a huge disruption, until then its like walking by a sleeping lion carrying uncooked steak.
Dropbox is never going to have the integration that these two companies can offer on their OS's.
Sure, I can get to my Dropbox files on my iPhone, and I can even use it to sync in some programs, but it's not even close to the synchronization that iCloud offers.
I was on Ubuntu, using their Dropbox client. I had some files that were already synced, but that I wanted to exclude from being synced (they were huge files, taking up precious space). I added an exclusion rule using their client, and poof, not only were my files gone from Dropbox, they were gone from my filesystem!
I liked Dropbox. I still do, but I won't use it. You can't make mistakes like that and expect trust in return.
- Have a per-folder P2P option (maybe buy AeroFS to achieve this?) I really don't need an Amazon server to host my personal photos/videos, and they take up a lot of space. But I would like them on each of my family's computers.
- Increase quota continuously (like google does with gmail). They could do it slowly enough that people would still be incentivized to do all the things the do now to get more space.
My own theory was that dropbox must be secretly headed towards a general cloud solution to justify those valuations. But this story puts it into perspective: dropbox is a competitor to MS and Apple.
Not true. They solved nothing, they copied existing solutions, and hide the problems. If there is some conflicting file, the just rename them to "$FILENAME (Conflict Copy from $MACHINE $DATE)" and then...do nothing!
I was really shocked when i discovered that my systems had hundreds of those conflicts, and i did never became a message about them from dropbox.
Long bet anyone? ;)
The only reason keeping my away from premium subscription is that some other companies offer far cheaper solution for offsite data backup.
http://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorageSeriously, if you think this is "a major disruption" (gosh, I hate that word), give us the functionality and services to make up on that promise.