8 ms·
Amazing. This comment must compare to the famous Slashdot takedown of the iPod. "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially
by jen729w 10y ago
Amazing. This comment must compare to the famous Slashdot takedown of the iPod.
"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. "
(Not meant as criticism; we're all horribly naive in hindsight.)
- devoply 10y agoThe point being most users are not power users. They just want stuff that they can get to work in 5 mins after a quick download. That's what a lot of geeks that have geeky solutions don't get. No one wants to do anything, they just want their cake for free preferably and they will pay money to eat it.
- noir_lord 10y agoI am a power user and I still want the 5 minutes after a quick download, the two aren't exclusive and there is too much (IMO) pride in the 'this is difficult to use so I'm special for knowing how to use it'. I spend way too much time bashing heads with the rest of the software ecosystem these days.
- skuzye 10y agoHeck I'm an engineer and I wouldn't want to setup a SFTP server to replace my Google Drive account
- erelde 10y agoOn the other hand this comment from the same thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917
- zerr 10y agoIt's not amazing at all :) I still struggle to find a reason why should I use dropbox over ftp or any other file repository service. I guess marketing and creating artificial buzz played big role in their success.
- briandear 10y agoExplain FTP to your mom and see how long it takes them to figure out how to do it. Also how can you FTP from an iPhone? How do you have local copies on multiple device stay in sync? How do you share a link to your file to a third party? I'm talking about normal people and not experienced engineers.
- drdaeman 10y agoI did, and dad uses this to share files with friends, privately (I had eventually built a tiny Flask app that does access checks and serves same files over HTTP). It's just a network-connected external drive to him.
- sgift 10y agoComfort. The reason is comfort.
- sergiotapia 10y agoI gladly pay $100/year to never ever ever EVER have to hear my wife complaining about me losing the pictures of us and the kids. You can't put a price on that my friend. :) Same reason I pay for iCloud storage on our family account. Peace of mind. Could I wire up some rsync contraption, sure maybe - would I sleep peacefully? No.
- zepolen 10y agoGoogle photos is better for that.
- kw71 10y agoSo long as Google decides to keep the service operating, maybe.
- icebraining 10y agoYes, but Dropbox isn't even profitable yet.
- pjc50 10y agoNo, I think we could have dismissed that one as ridiculous even back at the time. What power users need to always remember is how important usability by the uninitiated is when adopting solutions. This is why the market for security products is such a problem - they nearly always necessarily either put a barrier in front of common operations, or expose the user to the risk of losing their data by error, or hand all the difficult bits over to a commercial third party.
- icebraining 10y agoThe Slashdot takedown wasn't naivety, it was CmdrTaco's honest opinion of the iPod. It's absurd the way he's portrayed to be making some sort of market prediction.
- cmdrtaco 10y agoThanks!