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Ok what the fuck. This breaks a ton of stuff for me. You can't put it anywhere else??? Edit: for the first time in a decade I'm considering Dropbox alternative

Ok what the fuck. This breaks a ton of stuff for me. You can't put it anywhere else??? Edit: for the first time in a decade I'm considering Dropbox alternatives. This is a lot of different ways for a product to suddenly get crappier.

CamperBob2 4y ago
Dropbox gets skeevier and skeevier every time I install it. It used to be a snap to install and get working, now it's more about their business needs than mine. There is (still) room for competition in this space.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  If it is true that Apple is forcing their hand here, then whatever competition you find isn't going to be much better, unfortunately.
  - baby 4y ago
    Usually if you use apple devices you have to use apple apps. They tend to slowly kill the competition by improving things for themselves. So I would say iCloud is the way to go here.
    - alpaca128 4y ago
      What do you mean? I've got two Macs without iCloud account and aside from Finder & Mail I use almost zero Apple applications. Seems to work quite well including two Nextcloud accounts (aside from general system instability), though I've not been on Mac OS for long yet.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Apple has a bit of a history removing software features from the Mac. Nvidia driver support, 32-bit application support, OpenGL support and GNU support has all been dropped by Apple over the years. The longer I owned my Mac, the less capable it became.
  - t8sr 4y ago
    The trivial proof that Apple can't be forcing them is that other services continue to offer a synced folder. Dropbox has been extremely vague about what exactly they're trying to do and why they have to do it this way. It seems like they made an unpopular/dumb product decision, and they're just trying to shift the blame onto someone else.
iansinnott 4y ago
You might check out Nextcloud. A hosted version of course, since self-hosting could not be called a Dropbox replacement. Hetzner + Nextcloud [1] replaced Dropbox for me last year. [1]: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share
- itake 4y ago
  My understanding is this is driven by Apple's changes, not a decision by Dropbox. What does Nextcloud do to that Dropbox can't?
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    Apple forces the use of this API if you want files to be downloaded on-demand to save disk space. Nextcloud seems to support this use-case on macOS only experimentally [0]. In the light of these changes, they might decide they don’t want this feature at all on macOS and sync everything the old way. (I don’t know what their plans are, just speculating.) [0]: https://docs.nextcloud.com/desktop/latest/architecture.html#virtual-files https://docs.nextcloud.com/desktop/latest/architecture.html#...
- shortformblog 4y ago
  I actually tried this and wanted to like it but the problem is that they only have NextCloud-specific hosting in Germany at this time (unless that changed recently). That’s good if GDPR is a real concern for you, but it just kills the speed if you’re on the other side of the ocean. I worked NextCloud into my setup locally though. I don’t love its syncing capabilities, but you can get around those if you set up SyncThing folders as external storage. That way you get the benefits of NextCloud (the customizable interface) while getting the fast syncing speeds of SyncThing.

CamperBob2 4y ago

Dropbox gets skeevier and skeevier every time I install it. It used to be a snap to install and get working, now it's more about their business needs than mine. There is (still) room for competition in this space.

zdragnar 4y ago
If it is true that Apple is forcing their hand here, then whatever competition you find isn't going to be much better, unfortunately.
- baby 4y ago
  Usually if you use apple devices you have to use apple apps. They tend to slowly kill the competition by improving things for themselves. So I would say iCloud is the way to go here.
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    What do you mean? I've got two Macs without iCloud account and aside from Finder & Mail I use almost zero Apple applications. Seems to work quite well including two Nextcloud accounts (aside from general system instability), though I've not been on Mac OS for long yet.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Apple has a bit of a history removing software features from the Mac. Nvidia driver support, 32-bit application support, OpenGL support and GNU support has all been dropped by Apple over the years. The longer I owned my Mac, the less capable it became.
- t8sr 4y ago
  The trivial proof that Apple can't be forcing them is that other services continue to offer a synced folder. Dropbox has been extremely vague about what exactly they're trying to do and why they have to do it this way. It seems like they made an unpopular/dumb product decision, and they're just trying to shift the blame onto someone else.

iansinnott 4y ago

You might check out Nextcloud. A hosted version of course, since self-hosting could not be called a Dropbox replacement. Hetzner + Nextcloud [1] replaced Dropbox for me last year. [1]: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share

itake 4y ago
My understanding is this is driven by Apple's changes, not a decision by Dropbox. What does Nextcloud do to that Dropbox can't?
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  Apple forces the use of this API if you want files to be downloaded on-demand to save disk space. Nextcloud seems to support this use-case on macOS only experimentally [0]. In the light of these changes, they might decide they don’t want this feature at all on macOS and sync everything the old way. (I don’t know what their plans are, just speculating.) [0]: https://docs.nextcloud.com/desktop/latest/architecture.html#virtual-files https://docs.nextcloud.com/desktop/latest/architecture.html#...
shortformblog 4y ago
I actually tried this and wanted to like it but the problem is that they only have NextCloud-specific hosting in Germany at this time (unless that changed recently). That’s good if GDPR is a real concern for you, but it just kills the speed if you’re on the other side of the ocean. I worked NextCloud into my setup locally though. I don’t love its syncing capabilities, but you can get around those if you set up SyncThing folders as external storage. That way you get the benefits of NextCloud (the customizable interface) while getting the fast syncing speeds of SyncThing.