Stuff like this is why I like Dropbox even though it's more expensive. File syncing is their bread and butter. It's their main business, not a sideshow. They're always going to do this better than anyone else.
We had our three work machines all downloading a ~400MB file the other day. No reason Dropbox couldn't figure that out and have one machine download the file and then distribute over LAN.
They could have each machine download a chunk and have them swap chunks locally. That would asymptote in time towards a single download.
That would handle cases of the "one" machine going offline close to the end, or having it being the slowest machine available.
Dropbox works equally well across platforms with near 0 synchronization issues. It's just a folder. They aren't trying to add cloud to their own platform, they don't care what device you use or if you use Apple's word processor or Microsoft or Google Docs.
Dropbox has has a firebase/Parse style API you can use to build applications that store that application data in the cloud.
My favorite Dropbox API uses:
automatic syncing of O'reilly Media books. Whenever O'reilly updates one of their ebooks, I always have the current copy, because O'reilly syncs it with Dropbox.
1Password synching.
automatic Hackpad backups (they had that even before they were bought).
I installed this new app the other day, Trickster from the Mac App store, it automatically detected I was using Dropbox.
But I'll mention some negatives:
Those new recent android apps were really bad and I uninstalled them. Carousel and that other one, I don't even remember what it was now. They were just terrible apps, at least on my Galaxy S4.
Some would think this as a normal use-case for a cloud-drive.
But since 1Password backups seems to be using a format that Box.com won't upload, they are rejecting the files with this error:
> "Package files — Save as a flat file or a compressed ZIP file and reload"
It also means that you can't save .dmg-files.
I don't understand these limitations, Box.coms software feels rock-solid, and then I hit these strange limitations.
Dropbox on the other hand seems to allow all the filetypes I have thrown at them.
It's more than just that since the Android and IOS 1Password apps can sync from Dropbox without Dropbox being installed on the device. They're synching using the dropbox API in those cases I'd think.
Rubitrack is one that caught me out - http://www.rubitrack.com/faq.html
"This is a problem known to Dropbox for many years and it affects not just rubiTrack but hundreds of Mac apps that use a package file format."
Not sure what could be the issue with DMGs, though, since that exact issue is pretty much the reason for their existence.
Dropbox supports symlinks (and the way you'd expect them to)
Multiple Dropboxs. New feature, but I can run my work and home dropbox at the same time and they sync to different folders.
Sharing is cleaner. When I invite a Dropbox user to a share, the share appears in their drive. With Google drive, they get access to the share web only but it doesn't sync to their drive. The UI to get it to sync to drive isn't clear, so I end up doing a lot of 'support'
I also find the Google Drive .gdoc files bizarre. They aren't actual files, users don't understand you can't copy them out of the drive to back them up, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice#Role_in_author...
PRISM is basically a secure upload endpoint, not some automated, unaccountable, secret data siphoning tool. (Though they have those as well..)
If I were a popular enough internet company to get frequent NSL requests, it would only make sense to sign up. I have to provide the data, might as well make it as painless as possible.