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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

As an Office customer and a Dropbox customer, I can't help but have mixed feelings. Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox?

The whole thing about Dropbox is that just works. Files are files, folders are folders, if I move them about they move, etc. The only problem with Dropbox and Office is how Office locks the files so they're only synced after I close the Office program, not after every Ctrl+S. Fix that, and it's integrated.

The whole "save in the cloud" nonsense that desktop Office programs have these days feels like a mistake. I can understand how with iOS's "no files" design, this is the only way forward, but on desktop? Please let it stop.

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> I can understand how with iOS's "no files" design, this is the only way forward, but on desktop? Please let it stop.

Apparently mobile is the future and the desktop experience must be crippled to unify it with the mobile experience.

Personally, I don't understand how anyone gets real work done on tablets and phones. Sure there are some pretty silos, but trying to move data between silos is usually a nightmare.

> and the desktop experience must be crippled to unify it

Windows crippled their desktop experience for Windows 8 and 8.1 and are reversing it in Windows 10. No other operating system crippled their system in this way. So must is an unwarranted intensifier. Mistakes were made, things were learned, what you're saying isn't true.

What I think is the future for workstations and laptops is a web-integrated OS. Take Chrome OS as an example. These devices become more and more powerful as more and more of our data moves into the cloud.

I don't think anyone actually reviews, comments on or edits large documents on a tablet. That would be a nightmare. The most I've found bearable when reviewing papers on a tablet is highlighting. On a laptop you have the power of a full keyboard, which I can use to comfortably compose this comment, yet my laptop has almost no internal storage and all my documents are stored on the cloud.

This move is important for maintaining relevant, but I do think the insistence on tablets and phones is missing the whole of point of us making the data mobile.

> Personally, I don't understand how anyone gets real work done on tablets and phones.

I think very few people do, aside from simple tasks like sending emails.

> Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox?

> The whole "save in the cloud" nonsense that desktop Office programs have these days feels like a mistake.

I feel exactly the opposite way. As a student, I have all of my schoolwork stored on OneDrive and I don't know how I would live without it anymore. I can access all of my documents from any computer via onedrive.com (very helpful when printing for free in a computer lab) and I can check and edit OneNote notebooks from my mobile device. I don't understand what you mean by desktop Office going for a "no files" design because it seems to be the opposite in my view.

> The only problem with Dropbox and Office is how Office locks the files so they're only synced after I close the Office program, not after every Ctrl+S. Fix that, and it's integrated.

OneDrive can sync files that are being edited with an Office program. With this news, I'm sure Dropbox will have the same functionality soon.

> Office already has "direct" OneDrive integration and it's pretty useless, how could it be any better on Dropbox?

Useless?

Across my phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop, I would hardly call cloud file syncing useless.

Well fortunately there are no changes happening to how it already works. It's just added features if you want them, if you don't then don't use them.

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