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Comment by zhyder | Hacker News Reader

Aside from the issue of platform owners (Apple, Google, Microsoft) offering storage sync as an integrated feature, which others have pointed out, the other reason growth is limited is that filesystem storage and sync thereof has become less critical over time. Our apps increasingly do cloud-native walled-garden storage: docs in Google Docs / Notion / Confluence, mocks in Figma, etc. And code was cloud-native with version control much earlier.

I need sync for just photos on my phone (which Apple or Google are better for), and a small number of esigned PDFs and tax documents (for which any provider's free tier suffices).

Dropbox solved a problem of the 2010s.

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I'm sure there's also some number of users (like myself) that don't like the idea of a large company having access to their unencrypted files.

I also found Dropbox just started take on more and more bloat in what seems an obvious attempt to compete with Box and others.

Yep, the product was so much better when it was minimal and focused on doing one specific thing well. I really miss what it used to be... I hate the current Dropbox and Google Drive and OneDrive are also terrible alternatives.

What you want is the simplified version of Dropbox:

https://help.dropbox.com/installs/simplified-desktop-applica...

Here's a screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/7g2xRJP.png

It's just a non-intrusive little menu that lives on your system tray. No ads, nags, bloat or unwanted new "features" shoved onto you. It resembles their original software much more than it does the latest slop they've been pushing.

The context menu shortcuts in File Explorer for Copy Link, Share, and View on Dropbox still work. Sync works. Most of the other cruft is gone. It's great. It was so refreshing when it got installed. I would have left Dropbox by now without it.

Wow, the list of missing features exactly matches the list of things I don't want and often behaved like pop-up ads on my desktop. Thanks!

Thanks, I didn't even know this existed. It reminds me of how Reddit made the entire experience hostile unless you know to use old.reddit.com instead of the default URL.

I think important things for me (durable file storage) seems more and more niche for the general population.

I think it’s a real need that people are overlooking.

I’ve been working to teach my kids how important it is to store important records like taxes, ids, home records, etc in a durable store and just get shrugs and “why would I ever need last year’s taxes?”

I think dropbox’s problem is just and prefer it over having to but storage in microsoft, apple, and google’s walled gardens.

Files became an implementation detail.

It's mobile devices not having user-facing files as first-class citizens. The mobile era started just as Dropbox started to solve a computer era problem. Bad timing.

I'd argue Dropbox became as big as they are thanks to mobile taking off.

In a computer only world there are myriads of other solutions, elegant or not.

Most work computers were permanently plugged into network shared folders, and would have over the VPN access for on the road salesmen etc.

Home users mostly didn't care about cloud storage or shareable folders, those who did could get away with ftp (basically supported everywhere, like straight in explorer windows)

Dropbox flourished because most people got a second device, always connected, but with no decent file management. Many of us used Dropbox not even for sync but just to properly handle files.

They were a transitional technology.

>The mobile era started just as Dropbox started to solve a computer era problem.

I still can't wrap my head around how people find their files in the non-filesystem world. Whenever I need to work with files I take out my laptop.

Even before mo lies people would say “I saved it in word”. Even if it was written to a floppy or usb drive.

They didn’t have the concept of files

The average computer user in 2000 was far more computer literate than the average one in 2010, and things have gone downhill ever since.

So it's not just me. I'm glad, I feel weird that I have to save links to every Google doc and every internal confluence page because there's no proper search across these.

Especially in a filesystem I know where I placed something, but not always the title, so even if the search function was ok, which it mostly isn't, having to know the wording used for the title is really inconvenient.

Is this still the case? I have a "Files" app on my iPhone that shows me files and folders stored on my device, I can save/load files from most apps (that have a concept of files) and it's even integrated with iCloud so when I save a file to my phone's Downloads, I can access it from my Mac (and vice-versa).

I don't know about Android but on iOS I feel like we've had a simple and ubiquitous user-facing file system for a while. I use it all the time.

I suppose it might not be top of mind for most users because it wasn't there for so long.

Android literally has the Linux file system, although without root only the "home" directory is accessible. But within there is a Downloads folder, Documents folder, and all the other folders you'd expect from a home directory

With root you have access to the entire linux-style system directory

Android does, on iDevices it is still a kind of afterthought.

That's why one cannot "use" a mobile device wirhout references to the mothers of Google and Apple "engineers".

Seems like a cautionary tale of not ruthlessly reinventing yourself as market conditions change.

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