'The New Dropbox Sucks' (daringfireball.net) 135
Earlier this week, Dropbox introduced a new desktop application that brings a new look to the file-sharing service as well as new capabilities. With this release, Dropbox has changed the underlying structure of its desktop application to operate just like any other desktop application, rather than its previous incarnation, which was tied very closely to desktop file systems like Windows File Explorer or Apple's Finder. Dropbox adds: It's a single workspace to organize your content, connect your tools, and bring everyone together, wherever you are. The first thing you'll notice is an all-new Dropbox desktop app that we're introducing today through our early access program. It's more than an app, though -- it's a completely new experience. That all sounds great, until you attempt to use it. John Gruber, writing for Daring Fireball: I don't want any of this. All I want from Dropbox is a folder that syncs perfectly across my devices and allows sharing with friends and colleagues. That's it: a folder that syncs with sharing. And that's what Dropbox was. Now it's a monstrosity that embeds its own incredibly resource-heavy web browser engine. In a sense Steve Jobs was right -- the old Dropbox was a feature not a product. But it was a feature well-worth paying for, and which made millions of people very happy.
Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the exact same problems that many businesses, including this discussion and news forum, have had. They reach a point where they don't continue to grow, maximum market. Owners aren't satisfied even if the business is profitable, so they seek to change the function of the business to try to appeal to a wider audience in order to spawn more growth.
Unfortunately, they're short-sighted in this approach. They don't account for what their changes will do to the existing customer or user base. As such existing clientele are driven away because whatever it was that made the service special is now gone, and despite the changes, new clientele are not forthcoming. As such the business actually shrinks, as many of its old users find other solutions that are better than whatever the change ended up being, and even attempting to revert doesn't bring those people back.
So Dropbox, not content to be a paid service that might be profitable but doesn't really see much growth, throws away their principal reason for using them, and now it looks like their users will try to find a new service that does what the old service used to do. If those users are successful then Dropbox will probably end up closing up shop; not enough people will value the changes and even if they revert, customers that already found new homes won't come back.
Re:Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
As such existing clientele are driven away because whatever it was that made
This is confusing... Why would they feel they must do this?
Dropbox could very easily spin up an additional service and start offering a New, Optional client with the suggested enhancements that they think will draw in another audience, there is no need to require a change for existing customers and the existing service ---- they could even charge a separate service fee for those who they expect to attract by the "enhanced" offering.
Re:Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:4, Insightful)
Wish I could say why. It's happened often though, an entity could make a whole new division, but instead they discontinue their existing offering.
For Dropbox it could be an issue with maintenance costs, but I expect that the current model doesn't allow them to serve ads, and they'd like to make money doing that. Also could be that they are tired of paying to develop new APIs as OS development happens or they've run into walls where corporate computers with restrictive group policy doesn't allow their client to work, so they figure the web approach makes it more portable.
And it may make it more portable, but if it makes it a PITA to use, then that doesn't exactly endear them to me.
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war of the product managers.....someone's who career depends on New And Growthy wins over the previous one who wanted Works Right
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Then we will ask, why should we pay for these features or know to download this optional client. It makes this simple program more confusing to the customer.
Or if they charging extra, then it feels like we are being nickle and dimed which we don't like either.
You are going on the idea, that the customer is a rational person, who buys products strictly for a practical reason.
However most of the time it is the following.
1. I have heard of this brand before
2. My friend like it
3. I have enough information on it
Re:Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:4, Interesting)
Dropbox could very easily spin up an additional service and start offering a New, Optional client with the suggested enhancements
I totally agree here, they could easily build a client to do new cool stuff that worked in conjunction with the base filesystem syncing library, heck they could add new abilities to the base syncing engine while still keeping it lean, to support more advanced clients...
To mix a whole bunch of GUI and low level syncing code together seems kind of crazy.
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Obviously. However, they're afraid stagnating business could mean the beginning of a downward trend. They need existing customers to use as many features as possible to make it harder to leave. To this end they need to convince everybody to use the new client with all its features (as they see it).
Same reason why Facebook keep trying us to use more of its features, to create more dependence in addition to boosting revenue.
Running powerful modern computers in the office, dedicated to testing the client, they
Re:Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:4, Insightful)
> This is confusing... Why would they feel they must do this?
Business/MBA schools. They pound the idea into everyone's head that a business HAS to grow or die. There's no middle ground. And they churn out tons of graduates with this mindset, who inevitably get positions of power in companies and act on that idea. Often with long term disastrous results.
Re:Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:4, Informative)
That's because of the stock market. A company must grow, or it won't return its investment. It could return a dividend, but dividend yields are typically around 1-3 percent, not a great investment unless it also has growth potential. The entire stock market is a giant bubble of infinite exponential growth.
The problem is Dropbox is also big enough that creating a new product that will make an impact on the bottom line is also very hard (where as a smaller company can come out with a new line, or an extention). Hence the desire to wring more money out of a single one.
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The stock market is a reflection of the economy it's embedded in. Modern economies all assume exponential growth. Even your dividends example is exponential, just at a slightly lower rate.
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No, a dividend isn't exponential growth. If a company makes 100K a year and has 1K shares, it can put out $100 in dividends per year with 0 growth.
Economies don't expect any growth at all. They simply exist. An economy is all the buying, selling, and trading. The stock market is not a reflection of this, its an individual market that allows you to buy and sell shares of large corporations. It may reflect the economic growth of an area- or it may not, if those large companies are growing at a different
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Honestly I think it's to cover up their business metrics, obviously they know how much the new service is actually being used and obviously there's always noise on the forums but it's very hard to quantify how many are actually using a new feature, how many don't care about it, how many are complaining about it and so on. You can look at the Windows OS stats and see how many people are happy with Win7, don't really care much for Win8 at all and that Win10 adoption is slow. If it was all Windows you couldn't
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Why would they feel they must do this?
Dropbox could very easily spin up an additional service and start offering a New, Optional client with the suggested enhancements that they think will draw in another audience, there is no need to require a change for existing customers and the existing service ---- they could even charge a separate service fee for those who they expect to attract by the "enhanced" offering.
Because the temptation to use the power of product tying is too great. There is a product market risk that the tie-in drags down both products, but there is a much more important stock appreciation risk if the new product is advertised as optional. In the end, stock price appreciation in the short-term will trump other considerations. Unfortunately, most corporate compensation is structured to encourage short-term (and therefore myopic) strategy.
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Because the temptation to use the power of product tying is too great. Unfortunately, most corporate compensation is structured to encourage short-term (and therefore myopic) strategy.
And often, it isn't until the antitrust lawsuits that companies remember that while tying products together may boost the bottom line initially, but might not be legal.
Companies that do remember about legality usually do a cost/benefit analysis. The cost of a lawsuit, settlement, and public backlash weighed against the benefit of all those new customers in the short term, and with luck, the customers that they'll still have after the lawsuit and news coverage.
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Because they know the enhanced offering is bad and nobody will use it unless they're forced. Its like some one murdering your spouse and then pouncing you at the funeral.
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Someone seems to be teaching Marketing MBAs that the way of getting your customers to pay more is to burn bridges.
Unfortunately...capitalism.
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It is the Catch 22 of software Development.
You make a product to sell
Customers buy it.
Customers ask for new features.
If you implement the features other customers will not like them and leave
If you do not implement the features the customers who request it will not like them and leave.
If you try to offer a solution where it can be added in, then customers think you are trying to sell cripple ware without the upgrade and leave.
If you Incorporated the changes but make it a configurable option, then people are
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It is the Catch 22 of software Development.
No, it's not. It's an issue with all the ancillary parts of software development I'll describe.
You make a product to sell
Customers buy it.
That means that your software does something better than what presently exists. The issue is that what software vendors think is important and what customers think is important may not align.
Customers ask for new features.
Not every feature request is created equal. Cue the quote from Henry Ford about faster horses. However, it is common for developers to summarily dismiss those concerns and lack wisdom in the process.
My example for this one is
Overchoice (Score:2)
250GB of storage is basically a standard, 1TB is common
Perhaps for desktops, but not yet for phones. Even compact laptops tend to come with a choice of a 500 GB HDD or a 64 GB SSD. Big, fast, cheap: pick two. In addition, loading a 300 MB or larger Chromium process group for each open application (Discord, Slack, Skype, Visual Studio Code, etc.) piles up in RAM, and RAM is much smaller than 250 GB.
A 'Settings' panel should have lots of options to allow users to implement a piece of software the way they see fit.
As Havoc Pennington pointed out [ometer.com] and Alvin Toffler before him [wikipedia.org], every additional setting makes it incrementally more difficult for users to find the other settings.
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Re:Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:5, Interesting)
I like Dropbox because it does one thing really well - synchronize files between computers. The new blog post is talking about video conferencing and other things I don't care about. I'm not against that stuff, but they need to do it in a way that doesn't get in the way of the reason why people pay for their service.
Lately there's been some pressure on me to switch to OneDrive. One of my coworkers downloaded a virus through Dropbox and infected part of the network. Since then, Dropbox has been banned, but we're allowed to continue using OneDrive as it is a part of our Office 365 package. I tried it back in the Windows 8 days and always liked it, but by then I was already paying for Dropbox. There was also an infinite file history feature available for paid Dropbox customers and I used it like an automatic version control system for a few projects. Then the feature was downgraded and I forgot to opt into the grandfather clause one year...
Thinking about it all now, I sort of get it. Dropbox's position is in trouble. If all it did was retain current customers like me (going on 10 years now), it would eventually go out of business. It needs new customers in order to avoid being crowded out of their niche by Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Meanwhile, those three don't really have to do much. People are introduced to their service by default, either through work, signups for email accounts, or through the purchase of a new computer or phone. It's a familiar theme...
I don't mind the new stuff, I really really don't, I just hope they can get it working without forcing out their loyal customer base.
Re:Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing is that Dropbox could easily focus on being "the external hard drive" and rake in revenue that way. For example:
* Offer snapshots and backups going back several years. These would be checked in the background for bit rot.
* Offering an archive subfolder that can be set for "x" amount of time, where not even the owner can remove them (without contacting customer support) for a period of time. This ensures that if the Dropbox account is compromised, the files can't be deleted. Wasabi and Amazon Glacier have this.
* Offer the ability to sync different sections of the directory to different computers, as well as have stuff not synced at all. For example, I may not want my Word documents synced to my game machine, but a place for screenshots and save game files, yes.
* Offer both the ability to sync, as well as to directly do I/O in and out of Dropbox. This way, on a NAS or something with drive space, DropBox saves and such happen immediately and are synced up, while on a small laptop, they would be done over the WAN, which would be slower, but not eat up precious drive space.
* Offer clientside encryption, using a known good utility like Cryptomator.
* Offer Linux support. It would be nice to be able to mount via something decently fast and have a NAS back up things.
* Offer the ability to limit viewing/access of varying folders. For example, on GDrive, you cannot delete stuff in the Apps directory unless you fake an API call for each app in there. This mitigates ransomware, or bad apps.
* Offer sub-logins. For example, it would be nice to use a subset of an account when on a trip, and if the laptop is stolen, there isn't much the attacker can grab.
* Offer the ability to check all remotely files for poor syncing or bit rot, and either repair or move to a damaged files directory.
* Offer better compliance features. Box is doing great with this, while DropBox can't be used for a number of things.
* Offer a view ability. For example, I want to create a virtual directory to share with Alice, select files all around my Dropbox directory and have them visible in there. Even though the files are scattered around for me, the virtual directory shows them as a single directory for Alice.
* Look at adding backups. If DropBox could add CrashPlan or BackBlaze functionality, that would be a one stop shop for a SMB. Especially if the backups could be bare metal restored via created media somehow.
* Offer different accounts at once. For example, if someone works at ABC Company, and is part of a collaberation project between ABC and XYZ Corp, there should be a way to use multiple accounts at the same time, while keeping them separated, so there is no cross-contamination between the two. I know people who use Egnyte, solely because it is a cloud drive that nobody else uses, and there is no way it can confuse itself and some other share.
* Offer share-splitting on directories. This way, for someone to access a certain shared directory, it would take "m" out of "n" people assenting to it. Having separation of duties is essential to some companies' workflow.
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* Offer Linux support.
Dropbox already has Linux support, and they have for the entire time I've used their service. It's running in the system tray right now on my Linux desktop, and while I don't do it any more, years ago I used to run their client headless on some Linux servers as well -- I was doing that before Google Drive even existed. There's no mounting involved, it works just the same as the normal desktop client. You have a folder full of real files, and their client keeps everything synced.
Excelent list. (Score:2)
Especially deep versioning that cannot be easily subverted would be excellent.
Beware One Drive has no versions (Score:3)
Other than for office documents. It is in the wrong layer.
There is more to life than Office, and versioning is a critical feature. I consider One Drive useless.
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Specific alternatives I can think of off the top of my head are OneDrive, which is bundled into Windows at this point, and Google Drive. Both have Explorer integration. And considering iCloud just game to Windows with the help of Microsoft themselves, I imagine that's probably in a similar situation, though I haven't tried it out myself yet. And all three of these have free offerings just like Dropbox does.
Dropbox is really shooting themselves in the foot here. If they were the only option, maybe they could
Re:Same problem that affects many businesses (Score:4, Informative)
Neither OneDrive nor Google Drive has an official client for GNU/Linux. Which third-party client that does background bidirectional sync on either service is any good? (I've heard of rclone, but its FAQ [rclone.org] states that it doesn't do background bidirectional sync.)
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Syncthing.
http://syncthing.org/ [syncthing.org]
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And considering iCloud just game to Windows with the help of Microsoft themselves, I imagine that's probably in a similar situation, though I haven't tried it out myself yet.
iCloud has been available on Windows for years.
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Re:Hello, McFly? (Score:4, Informative)
What? Dropbox is by far the best syncing product for Linux. This is coming from someone who is trying like rid myself of it, not because it's a bad product (though it sounds like it might be that soon) but rather I have not been happy with their business decisions.
But I can find anything as good as Dropbox. I just plan to use my self-hosted Nextcloud server for now, until something else comes out better (Nextcloud's client sucks, as does ownCloud's, both of which has a lot of the problems you claim Dropbox has).
The cloud (Score:5, Funny)
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Live by the cloud, die by the cloud.
I prefer, "Confucius say, 'Use cloud, get rained on.'"
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Re: Software vendor's obsession with "experience" (Score:1)
Like Adobe Reader and their "unified sharing experience". I just wanna click a button and attach the PDF to my email, damn it
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Yup, that's when I dumped Foxit PDF Viewer. All of the sudden my PDFs were attached to some crappy social network nobody uses. Why the hell would I want to share my private PDFs on some social network?! Nobody anywhere ever asked for this feature. Uninstalled.
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Stop your whining (Score:2)
Don't you know, new is always better [youtube.com]!
Gonna get real mad if my photo stuff stops syncing (Score:5, Insightful)
My main purpose of DropBox is syncing photos off my phone and onto my desktop (where I have REAL tools for editing), without me thinking about it. Soon as the phone is on a wifi, it just uploads everything it took and the file sync on my mac pulls it all down. Nothing gets lost but everything is there for me to start editing and picking the best for publish.
If this automagic process stops, I'm gonna be pissed.
Google Drive still kinda-sorta works that way, but what they want for photos is to go straight to their Photos clouds and never come back, and i don't need 27 shots of a close-up of a flower on the cloud, most out of focus or awful, while i hunt for the one that actually was good. I only want the one good one to go up, but i can't see in full which one that is until i see it on my 27" at home. A depressing work process requiring a lot of manual deleting if shit.
Amazon did the same - wanting photos to go to their photo cloud where they clutter up the crap and i end up with 27 fuzzy pictures of a flower on my screensaver on my fire stick. UGH.
Just sync it up, then sync it down, and i'll put into a publishing cloud what is worth publishing.
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I also like that it allows built-in locking capabilities such that I'm required to use a fingerprint to get into the app. On Dropbox I had to lock that using a separate phone feature, then they pulled the "only syncs with up to 3 devices" bit (using a free account, because their paid plans really don't fit my needs
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Yes, OneDrive on iOS and Android work the same. I sync photos and stuff between an iPad, an LG V30+ and a few computers without any issues via a personal O365 account. Say nasty things about M$ but they've really upped their game in the last 3 years.
I've been a Google Drive user for years but the changes to the platform and the simple fact that I'm trusting a MARKETING COMPANY for personal IT services made me try O365. If/when MS trips over their own crank I'll move somewhere else.
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Just sync it up, then sync it down, and i'll put into a publishing cloud what is worth publishing.
It sounds like you need a cloud storage provider rather than a cloud groupware solution which is what ever frigging service is trying to turn into. I gave up with it all and ended up hosting my own cloud at home (currently using Seafile front and backends). Fortunately I have a beefy internet connection.
Re: Gonna get real mad if my photo stuff stops syn (Score:2)
âoeAnd donâ(TM)t worryâ"you can still organize all your work from the Dropbox folder in Windows File Explorer and macOS Finder.â
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Absolutely false. I use the SyncMe android app to backup new photos to my linux SMB share at 2am each day. It has worked reliably for every version of android since some time around Kit Kat, all the way up to Pie. So unless you are talking about some new change in the Q beta, I can say you are incorrect.
The old DropBox sucked too (Score:2)
Software (Score:2)
Is overengineering and absurd changes which make the product less usable, slower and simply worse is a bane of the software industry only? Or other industries are also affected?
Windows XP was relatively fast, neat and easy to use. It had its style and finesse. Updates were slow but they rarely caused fatal failures. It all went downhill with Vista. The same situation with Microsoft Office 2003 which has progressively gotten worse and worse.
The same with Android 4.4 which was arguably the easiest to use
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Why is it the color which indicates that it's on? And the position to the right? What about the nations which are writing/reading right to left? What about color blind people? It's all absurd for them. What about the standard checkbox?
It's total nonsense from "designers" (actual UX designers care about UX, not fashion). If you want a stylish and distinctive checkbox, make something stylish and distinctive that is still recognizably a checkbox.
It's just like movie franchises: everything good gets ruined by talentless hacks trying to justify their existence.
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There must be really few of these "actual UX designers" you mention - almost every software product whose team has been ranting on about "UX" for the past 10-15 years has become less usable than it used to be.
They're unicorns at this point, but I've worked with some great ones over the years. The best used to be a print graphics designer, and would lay out UI screens in a way that was "just right": exactly enough whitespace to avoid a sense of clutter, and not a pixel more. Never a UI behavior that surprised the user, and everything was discoverable.
Now get off my lawn, I need to shout at clouds!
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Windows XP was relatively fast, neat and easy to use. It had its style and finesse. Updates were slow but they rarely caused fatal failures. It all went downhill with Vista.
Well, when XP came out, many people criticized its look compared to 2000. In fact, Windows 2000 may be the best received Windows version ever, and it still has a timeless look to it.
But the problem with XP is that by todays standards, it completely disregarded security. Most people ran everything with full admin privileges. So yeah, it was convenient, software did what they supposed to do, no question asked. Vista introduced some level of access control, so of course, many things broke, but they mostly get
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Windows NT 3.51 service pack 5.
So do you have to upgrade? (Score:2)
Looking at my Dropbox, it still looks like the same old file integration I know and enjoy.
Is there some point when this is scheduled to stop working? Seems like I don't have to use this strange dropbox desktop app, if I do not want to...
I agree from the article that the resource usage seems pretty out of control, and that if iTunes file sharing works at all well it may be good to switch to that (for Mac users). iCloud Drive has been working really well for syncing for some time, so it's really the sharing
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I'm confused by the "new" app part.
I did just get a new upgraded client that now includes sparse syncing (on-demand access to files in the cloud without downloading a whole top level folder structure), and a capacity bump, and I'm pretty sure a cost increase.
I really have no beef with how Dropbox works now. It's not hard to think of possible upgrades they could produce that would make it more useful. I always figured they didn't bother because they were making enough money without it.
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Ya works well, and they'll take good care of your soul too.
Allow me to recommend Cryptomator.org.
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It'd be more productive to discuss the pros and cons for each such "somewhere else" than to swear, insult people with disabilities, and suggest suicide.
Just like what Facebook did... (Score:1)
The 3 device limit (Score:2)
Made me spin up a Nextcloud instance. These changes ensure I commit to it and remove Dropbox from the devices that still have it installed.
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I had the same problem with GitLab, a lot of memory to serve only *me*(my SO is not a programmer...). Until I found Gitea/Gogs.
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Some people are running it on the Pi, it's just a bit slow (but not catastrophically so if you're the only user).
No big deal - as long as it's optional (Score:2)
But (as many others here seem to feel) the current product should remain available for those who do not want to be burdened with all of these extra bells and whistles.
Otherwise it'll be time to migrate elsewhere, which is the only language corporate entities usually understand and take action on in cases like this.
Dropbox Re-Do (Score:1)
Here's your free sample of horseshit (Score:3)
"It's more than an app, though- it's a completely new experience."
Oh great, more bullshit to clog my phone and PC. Just what I didn't ask for and never wanted.
Anytime I hear "it's a completely new experience" my first thought is "fuuuuuuuuuuuck NO."
Stop pretending to 'improve' things. Some things work just fine the way they are.
Resilio Sync (Score:2, Insightful)
This is one more reason I am glad I left Dropbox behind in favor of Resilio Sync.
*Just* syncing and sharing on my devices and totally under my control. Plus it is easy to ignore specific files and Sync doesn't screw up my git repos ;-)
Alternative? (Score:2)
That's why I created a DropBox Shell (Score:1)
Time to find somethign else (Score:2)
I want a simple folder that is mirrored on all attached machines. I pay for drop box because it does that. If it stops doing that I will stop paying an move to one of the many other annoying cloud systems until someone else creates a mirrored folder.
If it is a folder that syncs for windows and linux, I'l use it - and pay for it.