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I was initially ecstatic about Dropbox, but they seem to be at best stagnant in terms of functionality. It was my solution for having access to all my photos o

by tspike 10y ago

I was initially ecstatic about Dropbox, but they seem to be at best stagnant in terms of functionality. It was my solution for having access to all my photos on all devices, but then they canceled Carousel with the promise that its functionality would be rolled into the main app. That hasn't happened. The photos feature on iOS is pathetically limited, with slow loading times, no way to organize photos (you can't even access albums you create on desktop), and inadequate sync functionality. The web client isn't much better. What exactly are all those engineers doing with their time? I am increasingly wary of Google, and do not wish to give them all of my photos. What solutions am I left with? I don't feel like my asks are a tall order for a company of Dropbox's size. I basically want what the old Picasa desktop app provided, except synchronized between all my devices. I can't possibly be the only one with this problem: an ever-growing library of photos and videos, scattered across various phones, DSLRs and computers with the need to organize them and share them easily. I am happy to pay.

amelius 10y ago
Why should a photo app be integrated into a filesystem? That sounds like bad engineering to me. And also like a bad value-proposition. A filesystem should be just that, a filesystem. And thirdparty apps should be able to use it to store pictures and such.
- tspike 10y ago
  What are your recommendations for a fast, intuitive, portable third-party solution that uses Dropbox as a data store for my use case? Edit: While separating these concerns (storage and presentation) is a solid software engineering approach, without open standards it would seem to just add additional layers of vendor lock-in and brittleness. Syncing to local storage is a non-starter for mobile.
niftich 10y ago
For your usecase, Prime Photos [1] from Amazon, where they meld the traditional album and folder metaphors with auto-classifying ML -- the latter which you can luckily turn off if it creeps you out, unlike with Google. But this is an under-served market and many people would pay to some paltry amount a month to have their family photos (or professional photographs) kept safe in the Cloud. Unfortunately most cloud storage providers are chasing the (presumably much more lucrative) enterprise market with document-editing and office-y features. [1] https://www.amazon.com/photos/home https://www.amazon.com/photos/home
- tspike 10y ago
  This looks interesting, I wasn't aware Amazon had entered this space. I'm not sure I trust Amazon either, but at least they're explicit in their desire to take my money in exchange for products and services. Edit: it doesn't appear to provide any ability to organize photos yourself?
  - niftich 10y ago
    For the time being you can freely switch two different interfaces for the same backend: Prime Photos and Amazon Drive [1]. It's clunky. Cloud Drive was their first pass, Photos is their second and is barely a few months old, and I'm not whether the old interface will be disabled for Photos users at some point. The uncertainty about the product direction is a bit off-putting, but it works decently well for my use-case [2], even if now you can't get that particular tier without Prime. [1] https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709221#12709936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709221#12709936
adrianN 10y ago
I'm satisfied with Dropbox, because it does what it advertises: it syncs files between computers without getting in the way. I would be very worried if it weren't stagnant in terms of functionality, because change for change's sake is the path to bloated crapware. If you want your photos on all devices, Dropbox does this for you. If you want software to look at the photos that is a different task and should be accomplished by a different piece of software.

by tspike 10y ago

amelius 10y ago

Why should a photo app be integrated into a filesystem? That sounds like bad engineering to me. And also like a bad value-proposition. A filesystem should be just that, a filesystem. And thirdparty apps should be able to use it to store pictures and such.

tspike 10y ago
What are your recommendations for a fast, intuitive, portable third-party solution that uses Dropbox as a data store for my use case? Edit: While separating these concerns (storage and presentation) is a solid software engineering approach, without open standards it would seem to just add additional layers of vendor lock-in and brittleness. Syncing to local storage is a non-starter for mobile.

niftich 10y ago

For your usecase, Prime Photos [1] from Amazon, where they meld the traditional album and folder metaphors with auto-classifying ML -- the latter which you can luckily turn off if it creeps you out, unlike with Google. But this is an under-served market and many people would pay to some paltry amount a month to have their family photos (or professional photographs) kept safe in the Cloud. Unfortunately most cloud storage providers are chasing the (presumably much more lucrative) enterprise market with document-editing and office-y features. [1] https://www.amazon.com/photos/home https://www.amazon.com/photos/home

tspike 10y ago
This looks interesting, I wasn't aware Amazon had entered this space. I'm not sure I trust Amazon either, but at least they're explicit in their desire to take my money in exchange for products and services. Edit: it doesn't appear to provide any ability to organize photos yourself?
- niftich 10y ago
  For the time being you can freely switch two different interfaces for the same backend: Prime Photos and Amazon Drive [1]. It's clunky. Cloud Drive was their first pass, Photos is their second and is barely a few months old, and I'm not whether the old interface will be disabled for Photos users at some point. The uncertainty about the product direction is a bit off-putting, but it works decently well for my use-case [2], even if now you can't get that particular tier without Prime. [1] https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709221#12709936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709221#12709936

adrianN 10y ago

I'm satisfied with Dropbox, because it does what it advertises: it syncs files between computers without getting in the way. I would be very worried if it weren't stagnant in terms of functionality, because change for change's sake is the path to bloated crapware. If you want your photos on all devices, Dropbox does this for you. If you want software to look at the photos that is a different task and should be accomplished by a different piece of software.