3 ms·

Ask HN: Should Apple buy Dropbox for seamless doc sharing on iPad?

4 points by jfi 16y ago

I've read a lot of comments and reviews on the iPad. One of the major criticisms has been sharing documents and webpages between laptops, desktops, iPhones, and iPads. Should AAPL buy DropBox so it could offer a more seamless user experience?

glebk 16y ago
Interesting comment because I've read that one of Apple's visions with their mobile devices is to get rid of the traditional hierarchical filesystem.
- jfi 16y ago
  Oh really? I had not heard that, I'm going to have to google around for some articles on this, I'm interested to read up on it. Thanks for the heads up!
  - glebk 16y ago
    I was referring to what I read here: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_reinventing_file_access_wireless_sharing_for_ipad.html http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_reinvent... but let me know what you think.
    - jfi 16y ago
      Awesome! Having the iPad show up as a share is great and definitely a step in the right direction. Having all files available to all your devices as the default (and with browser synch) is the holy grail imho.
    - c1sc0 16y ago
      That is not how filesharing is implemented on the iPad. I built an iPad app based on the initial (beta SDK) description & I basically gave up on using the file sharing feature once I saw how incredibly incompetent the current implementation is. Apple really dropped the ball here.
evgen 16y ago
Why buy dropbox when it is cheaper and easier to just fix some of the problems with the existing MobileMe service? Stealing a page from dropbox and similar services, Apple should just make a basic MobileMe account free and let you buy additional services as needed. The service is already integrated into the desktop OS, it is partially integrated into the iPhone OS, and if they just added some polish and back-end resources they would have a decent start towards cutting off Google encroachment into their platform.

3 ms·

Ask HN: Should Apple buy Dropbox for seamless doc sharing on iPad?

4 points by jfi 16y ago

glebk 16y ago
Interesting comment because I've read that one of Apple's visions with their mobile devices is to get rid of the traditional hierarchical filesystem.
- jfi 16y ago
  Oh really? I had not heard that, I'm going to have to google around for some articles on this, I'm interested to read up on it. Thanks for the heads up!
  - glebk 16y ago
    I was referring to what I read here: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_reinventing_file_access_wireless_sharing_for_ipad.html http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_reinvent... but let me know what you think.
    - jfi 16y ago
      Awesome! Having the iPad show up as a share is great and definitely a step in the right direction. Having all files available to all your devices as the default (and with browser synch) is the holy grail imho.
    - c1sc0 16y ago
      That is not how filesharing is implemented on the iPad. I built an iPad app based on the initial (beta SDK) description & I basically gave up on using the file sharing feature once I saw how incredibly incompetent the current implementation is. Apple really dropped the ball here.
evgen 16y ago
Why buy dropbox when it is cheaper and easier to just fix some of the problems with the existing MobileMe service? Stealing a page from dropbox and similar services, Apple should just make a basic MobileMe account free and let you buy additional services as needed. The service is already integrated into the desktop OS, it is partially integrated into the iPhone OS, and if they just added some polish and back-end resources they would have a decent start towards cutting off Google encroachment into their platform.