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Comment by eob | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how long it's going to be before Dropbox announces another vertical. They have an amazing product, but it's basically been unchanged for years now and been allowed to succeed (and thrive!) as such because competitors have always treated their own Dropbox-style clients as a hobby instead of a product.

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Another vertical like http://www.mailboxapp.com/ ?

I've been impressed with Dropbox Datastore (https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore)

I use Copy for storing photos since it gives a lot of free space. The client is more or less identical to Dropbox's. I can barely tell the difference between the popup for Dropbox and the popup for Copy, and it works the same. I wrote a post comparing prices and features: http://mkronline.com/2014/06/05/dropbox-vs-copy-a-comparison...

I disagree that the product has been unchanged for years. Their app syncs photos on my phone, the shared link gives a great preview of files (esp videos), they've got a strong API for developers and they're improving picture sharing.

These may seem like little changes to one product but they're making it a rock solid product in one vertical that is slowly creeping out into others.

Okay, it's fairly off-topic, but after reading that I had to respond. I consider the shared link a serious anti-feature compared to the old direct link, I suppose due to poor engineering.

- For pictures: There is no way to see the full resolution without clicking the download link. Fine for photos, no good for the screenshots I like to upload.

- For PDFs: uses pdf.js. That would be nice if I were still using Adobe Reader, not so much in Safari where I have a superior reader built in.

They also released Carousel not long ago: https://www.carousel.com/

I don't see what Carousel does that Dropbox didn't do already. Dropbox app already backs up all photos, allows me to browse them and to share them with others.

You know, I actually thought that too, then I tried to actually use it for a while, and found the viewing and sharing to be such a breeze. On Android, to share a photo, you just have to swipe up, and all the photos that you swiped up on will be shareable very easily in just two clicks. I also thought the technology behind it is quite interesting. https://tech.dropbox.com/2014/04/building-carousel-part-i-ho...

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