The case against Dropbox looks stronger with each passing day

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/22/9372563/dropbox-really-is-a-feature

by phren0logy • 11 years ago

15 4 11 years ago

phren0logy• 11 years ago

I have used Dropbox since around 2011, and I've been happy with it. While other services have popped up, my files are so valuable to me (and Dropbox has been so reliable and seamless) that I have continued to pay for the service.

I don't consider my money wasted, but I have to agree with the sentiment that file sync is becoming a commodity. I hope Dropbox can spice things up a bit, as I still consider them to be the best in the business.

barronlroth• 11 years ago

Fully agree. As a professional photographer, I'll happily pay for 1TB of Dropbox Pro. It is simply the most effortless way to share images with my clients.

fit2rule• 11 years ago

Dropbox is just one of those serviced I'd rather that the OS vendors got right, built in to the OS, and left it at that. Of course, I tend to think OS vendors are asleep at the wheel these days, however ..

(Which is why I store everything on IPFS.)

veidr• 11 years ago

I disagree[1]; I think that the entire value proposition of Dropbox is the fact that it is cross-platform and cross-device.

The mainstream OSes all do have a basically working version of the same thing.

1. OS X and iOS have iCloud Drive, which didn't work for many generations (as one would expect of an Apple internet/cloud service) but now does basically work. However it does not work at all on any non-Apple platform.

2. Windows and Windows Phone have a confusing array of different versions of OneDrive, but that does basically work on Windows and Windows Phone. Some versions of OneDrive sort of work on some other platforms too, but not really. My OneDrive (which is different from my sister's version, because hmm I get mine through my work's Office 365) does not work at all on OS X.

3. Android has Google Drive, which is closer to a real Dropbox competitor in that it wants to be cross-platform. But it really sucks on OS X, and Windows — seems overly focused on mobile.

Because these services are all biased to their own platforms, I still find Dropbox works better work involving different platforms and various types of devices.

Now, if OS vendors would work to implement conformance with an interoperable standard for this kind of synchronization, that would be cool. But, they won't (for the foreseeable future).

[1] http://masonmark.com/why-icloud-cant-ever-be-as-good-as-drop...

The case against Dropbox looks stronger with each passing day

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