[Macworld]

Post your comments for Why I hope Apple never buys Dropbox here

[philostein]

Had to reset my password to post a comment…

Using Notational Velocity to store passwords is working quite well for me. Type a website into the search field, hit enter and type your email and password. Paste the password into the site's password field.

Notational Velocity has an encrypted database, so it's pretty secure, and it's easy to search.

This site's gibberish pasword in in there now…

[Joel001]

I can only heartily agree. The very ubiquity of Dropbox, across all platforms, is what gives it such power, especially to Mac/iOS users who need to cooperate with those on other OSs. The more I learn about iCloud, the less it suits me and the way I like to work. Dropbox, on the other hand, are very intelligently expanding the functionality of the service without hurting its transparency or your level of control.

Long-time Apple developers Omni are planning to introduce a product with an API for document sync, which will be another interesting option.

[CatOne]

Note you can access your files via Finder without the programs: All your files will show up in the "All my Files" view, and of course any Spotlight search will find them.

[EvilDevilEvil]

Quote

Long-time Apple developers Omni are planning to introduce a product with an API for document sync, which will be another interesting option.

Well that is going to remain Apple only then :-)

[talmy]

Quite simply, I've got Dropbox on all my devices (including a Windows PC) and shut off iCloud after spending a short time looking at it. iCloud not only was worthless because of its sandboxing but also a hinderance because if you have it's document sharing turned on any new document save defaults to iCloud and you have to go out of your way every time to avoid it.

[davidlfoster]

While it's hard to imagine an action that Apple could take to immediately drive me to Android or Microsoft, imposing updates to OS X and iOS to implement code that prevents Dropbox from working would fit that bill.

Dropbox is marvelous and an integral part of everything I do on all my computing devices. Their biggest improvement opportunity is to increase security, but really that's all they need to do to make the service nearly perfect.

[funnyboy88]

Gosh darn, iCloud is great for managing whatever current set of word processing documents I need in Pages, but after that, Dropbox is key for managing a random collection of files. For example, for handling my utility bills, I have a folder that is a mash up of Numbers docs, PDF's, and screen capture jpegs. Dropbox can handle that folder. iCloud cannot.

[VitaminCM]

Again, Apple's fears that anyone would ever leave them if given the chance cripple it's own products. I love Dropbox and find iClown to be a pale knock-off.
Dropbox allows my wife and I (plus other friends and family) to effortlessly backup, sync, and share our data in constantly evolving ways. It integrates with so many apps and services that its value is always expanding.
Try bouncing around between a Mac, PC, iPhone, Adriod tablet, the web and your parent's computer with iClown.
Funny thing is, this freedom actually makes me like my Mac and iPhone more, not less.
Apple is the largest company in the world now. It's time they stopped acting like the insecure alsorans that they were15 years ago. You don't need protectionism any more. Grow up!

[azabache]

I agree with the sentiment that Apple should not buy Dropbox. It's cloud storage the way we're used to.

I see the rationale for a sandboxed iCloud, especially for the general market Apple has hitched its cart of goods to.

The hierarchical file system, let's face it, is not as intuitive as we'd like to think it is.

I've helped enough intelligent people who just don't get it. I'm sure you've seen the desktops strewn with files and folders. The bloated trashcans. The duplicate files in different folders saved willy-nilly.

(And, have you ever tried to help anyone find anything in Windows? I had to throw that in.)

iCloud takes care of those issues and, for the most part, succeeds. It's direct and simple. Wrote a report? Go to Pages. A presentation? Go to Keynote. A spreadsheet? Numbers.

I can see it coexisting with Dropbox and other "in the FInder" cloud storage schemes.

There's Microsoft's Skydrive (don't laugh) which may not be as polished as Dropbox, but has served me well since it was named Live and/or whatever.

Google Drive is not that bad, but when it gets cranky it forces a do-over.

The diversity accommodates different types of users. It's not a zero-sum game.

[In my case, I have over 50GB of cloud storage among all the services. Not a penny spent. It took a bit of deciding what went where at the start. ]

[lancelotlink]

This article came just in time. I looked today to find my iBank file in dropbox and it was gone. I read here that one of the secondary features was that you could recover deleted files and as quick as that the file was back! I'm a very happy person (and relieved) right now

[hmurchison]

I don't think the play for Dropbox was about their product it was about their team. Dropbox has clever engineers and that was likely the desirable feature of a Dropbox acquisition. Jobs told them "You have a feature, not a product". He was correct as witnessed by today's growing collection of similar products like Skydrive, Google Drive, Cubby, Box and more.

Dropbox is great if you're heavily entrenched in a folder laden filesystem. If you feel like your workflow is neatly tailored to your own needs then that's great. It could be said that such people are the exception and not the norm. Most people I've seen have anything but a clean filing system on their computer. I doubt there is any desire by Cupertino to block anything. Apple has iCloud and going forward they feel that it's the better cloud technology and I agree with them.

Folders really don't scale well. The more documents you add the more decisions about where those files should go are going to happen. Folders also constrain you. Folders are just a virtual collection of files and data but the minute we put something in a folder we are actually erasing one of the biggest advantages of a computer (which is to leverage metadata and provide me different views of my files stored on my system or remotely).

The superior solution appears to be a move towards flattening our the filesystem a bit, leveraging metadata and building intelligence into the application. In the aforementioned PDF example and iCloud workflow would look like 1. Launch Preview and open PDF. 2. decide that another app needs to modify/read the document. 3. Click share menu and choose another PDF app.

We're moving away from import/export from the file menu to a more intelligent sharing mechanism in both OS X and iOS. This hopefully will eventually lead into some smarts baked into the system and allow me to send a file across supported apps with each app being able to modify the file without the need for endless duplication of the file.

There will be a need for both types of folder/document sync but the odds are the iCloud solutions would be easier to understand for a vast amount of consumers.

[djr12]

Don't forget, Apple had this idea before Dropbox even existed. iDisk was basically a pioneer in the functionality that Dropbox provides. The only caveat is that it was so incredibly slow and painful to use. Dropbox is seamless, transparent and fast. Well, and free for 2 GB. Those factors helped it succeed where iDisk failed.

I don't really think of Apple's strategy on iCloud as being about sandboxing, though maybe it is. I see them as trying to simplify file management. But it's doomed to failure. The Finder, folders, files -- yes, they're very complex. But the complexity is necessary because we have a lot of files. Simply making it harder to use them in anything other than the program that created them isn't helping anything. Furthermore, iCloud may seem neat and tidy when you're first starting out and have few files. But think of using it once you have 100, 200, 300 files in a give program? It would be a nightmare. Finder without list view or Column view or even ease of using folders. No thanks.

[nine11c2]

Why "Drop" things into Dropbox. The beauty of Dropbox is I ALWAYS work in my Dropbox folder so my current stuff is there. Therefore, I don't have to remember. If it gets full (and there are plenty of ways to grow free storage) then I take OLDER stuff off...