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I had frustrations with Dropbox about a lot of this when I realized they had made little public effort for Apple Silicon, but I think the fact that Dropbox is k

I had frustrations with Dropbox about a lot of this when I realized they had made little public effort for Apple Silicon, but I think the fact that Dropbox is kind of stuck moving in this direction essentially highlights that Apple’s approach to cloud works for Apple … but not really anyone else. I think for tools like like Box or even OneDrive, this move makes sense for, but Dropbox is intended to be a living backup of your primary folders, and that model just doesn’t fit with this. This is almost bad enough to the point where the right play might be to have a machine on another platform, like Linux or Windows, manage your file sync, then to just access it on your local network. Apple really messed this up.

Twisell 4y ago
Well from a user and third party developer perpective it actually does make some sense for an OS to provide standardisation over cloud storage. "If in folder X expect content to require fetching depending on application Y settings and act/manage exceptions accordingly. You can use that API if needed than standardize sync states across providers" It is easier to exclude or target specifically for backup, easier to know you shouldn't store there for offline use, etc... Being forced into OneDrive on Windows10 for corporate need since 10 month, I can tell you it's unbelievably easy to misconfigure OneDrive into a slugish unresponsive nightmare. Especially if you dare mix Organization OneDrive and Organization Sharepoint "mount points" in not exactly the good non obvious way. (never ever for hell's sake use the sync button in SharePoint website, use add to your OneDrive button)
- shortformblog 4y ago
  > Well from a user and third party developer perpective it actually does make some sense for an OS to provide standardisation over cloud storage. There’s standardization and there’s treating every cloud service like it should only work in one way. Dropbox for years sold itself as being intended to work as your hard drive that could follow you as you switched devices. But now it’s working on a platform that actively discourages its use in that way, one that is operated by a company that is a direct competitor to Dropbox (albeit one that is not cross-platform). It feels like they’re getting crunched by standardization that is meant to disrupt their business model. Now is that business model struggling for other reasons? Sure. But it shouldn’t be missed how this shift is arguably more disruptive to Dropbox than many of its competitors. I’m not saying that standardization isn’t a good idea. But the API clearly was built without a lot of input from users of these services to understand why they want them to work in certain ways.
  - Twisell 4y ago
    Not familiar enough was Dropbox was able to mount on "/" ??? As others and the suport page pointed you, you can still put a symlink at any available location you want. It's still fully usable but it's now garanteed to not mess around with others contents. I personally am an iCloud Drive user at home because if I already chose to trust Apple for the OS and all, using their (contractually paid for) sync service doesn't require me to trust another party. Standardization and sandboxing of cloud providers actually make me think about subscribing to a third party (for diversification let's say, or for separation of concerns when sharing on pro/other context). Because if standardized I can be assured by OS policy that theses sync services won't fuck around anywhere else than in their designated folder. So yeah, maybe from now on you'd better go for rsync based tools that don't target App Store for pro use. But for 90% of the target audience this might actually be a desirable feature.
    - Kwpolska 4y ago
      > Not familiar enough was Dropbox was able to mount on "/" ??? No, but what the OP meant was that Dropbox users think of it as a replacement for an external hard drive with all your projects. (Myself, I consider Dropbox, OneDrive, and iCloud Drive, to be the same thing with a different corporate overlord, and I migrated from Dropbox to OneDrive without any changes to my workflows…) > It's still fully usable but it's now garanteed to not mess around with others contents. How would it mess around before? Do you have any examples?
      - Twisell 4y ago
        I can't point out a specific bug/vulnerability because I don't follow them that closely on platforms I don't use. It's just that globally I'm not fond of background processes that run without being properly sandboxed through the OS. I'm less regarding when using FOSS software but for commercial closed source solution like dropbox I'd rather have them run with limited privileges.
        shortformblog 4y ago
- guwidoe 4y ago
  > it's unbelievably easy to misconfigure OneDrive into a slugish unresponsive nightmare. Especially if you dare mix Organization OneDrive and Organization Sharepoint "mount points" in not exactly the good non obvious way. (never ever for hell's sake use the sync button in SharePoint website, use add to your OneDrive button) I am using both of these, direct sync of SharePoint libraries (what you call Organization Sharepoint) as well as linking the libraries to the personal library (what you call Organization OneDrive) and have never had any issues. What are your problems with it? The only thing one has to know is that it's not possible to do both at the same time for a given directory: a synced folder (and its children) can't be linked to personal and a linked folder (and its children) can't be synced. Note that "linking" also "syncs" it, just in a different location.
  - Twisell 4y ago
    Well my organization current moto is to create hundred of different sharepoint sites that can contain multiple document libraries to compartmentalize (I personally think it's a really bad idea but i have to comply). So when you happen to work with 10+ Sharepoint sites there is two way to operate if you must sync. 1. Click sync on the document library. Then each sync while need a configuration entry in One Drive and each sync will create it's own background worker. Prioritization between sync/mounts point must happen somehow but if you open 10+ I experienced lot's of sync error/delay. Sync parameters to each sharepoint have to be defined manually and independently on all your devices. 2.You can add a "shortcut" pointing to the sharepoint into your organization (personal) OneDrive. The configuration is then stored on your OneDrive profile, it's synchronized across all you device and the OneDrive webapp. You can move the shortcut around (inside your OneDrive) and rename the folder as you which. It only require one background worker that don't compete for system ressources with others. I was initially configured using solution 1 and experienced many conflict/lag/bug. Since I implemented aolution 2 everything is (almost) flawless. So the question remain why do they offer two concuring implementations one of which can lead to madness... legacy support I guess.
ryandrake 4y ago
> the right play might be to have a machine on another platform, like Linux or Windows, manage your file sync, then to just access it on your local network. I mean, the Internet has known for a long time that 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…
- shortformblog 4y ago
  I know you’re being sarcastic and highlighting an infamous comment but I sort of feel like that’s what we’re being driven back to.

Twisell 4y ago

Well from a user and third party developer perpective it actually does make some sense for an OS to provide standardisation over cloud storage. "If in folder X expect content to require fetching depending on application Y settings and act/manage exceptions accordingly. You can use that API if needed than standardize sync states across providers" It is easier to exclude or target specifically for backup, easier to know you shouldn't store there for offline use, etc... Being forced into OneDrive on Windows10 for corporate need since 10 month, I can tell you it's unbelievably easy to misconfigure OneDrive into a slugish unresponsive nightmare. Especially if you dare mix Organization OneDrive and Organization Sharepoint "mount points" in not exactly the good non obvious way. (never ever for hell's sake use the sync button in SharePoint website, use add to your OneDrive button)

shortformblog 4y ago
> Well from a user and third party developer perpective it actually does make some sense for an OS to provide standardisation over cloud storage. There’s standardization and there’s treating every cloud service like it should only work in one way. Dropbox for years sold itself as being intended to work as your hard drive that could follow you as you switched devices. But now it’s working on a platform that actively discourages its use in that way, one that is operated by a company that is a direct competitor to Dropbox (albeit one that is not cross-platform). It feels like they’re getting crunched by standardization that is meant to disrupt their business model. Now is that business model struggling for other reasons? Sure. But it shouldn’t be missed how this shift is arguably more disruptive to Dropbox than many of its competitors. I’m not saying that standardization isn’t a good idea. But the API clearly was built without a lot of input from users of these services to understand why they want them to work in certain ways.
- Twisell 4y ago
  Not familiar enough was Dropbox was able to mount on "/" ??? As others and the suport page pointed you, you can still put a symlink at any available location you want. It's still fully usable but it's now garanteed to not mess around with others contents. I personally am an iCloud Drive user at home because if I already chose to trust Apple for the OS and all, using their (contractually paid for) sync service doesn't require me to trust another party. Standardization and sandboxing of cloud providers actually make me think about subscribing to a third party (for diversification let's say, or for separation of concerns when sharing on pro/other context). Because if standardized I can be assured by OS policy that theses sync services won't fuck around anywhere else than in their designated folder. So yeah, maybe from now on you'd better go for rsync based tools that don't target App Store for pro use. But for 90% of the target audience this might actually be a desirable feature.
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    > Not familiar enough was Dropbox was able to mount on "/" ??? No, but what the OP meant was that Dropbox users think of it as a replacement for an external hard drive with all your projects. (Myself, I consider Dropbox, OneDrive, and iCloud Drive, to be the same thing with a different corporate overlord, and I migrated from Dropbox to OneDrive without any changes to my workflows…) > It's still fully usable but it's now garanteed to not mess around with others contents. How would it mess around before? Do you have any examples?
    - Twisell 4y ago
      I can't point out a specific bug/vulnerability because I don't follow them that closely on platforms I don't use. It's just that globally I'm not fond of background processes that run without being properly sandboxed through the OS. I'm less regarding when using FOSS software but for commercial closed source solution like dropbox I'd rather have them run with limited privileges.
      - shortformblog 4y ago
guwidoe 4y ago
> it's unbelievably easy to misconfigure OneDrive into a slugish unresponsive nightmare. Especially if you dare mix Organization OneDrive and Organization Sharepoint "mount points" in not exactly the good non obvious way. (never ever for hell's sake use the sync button in SharePoint website, use add to your OneDrive button) I am using both of these, direct sync of SharePoint libraries (what you call Organization Sharepoint) as well as linking the libraries to the personal library (what you call Organization OneDrive) and have never had any issues. What are your problems with it? The only thing one has to know is that it's not possible to do both at the same time for a given directory: a synced folder (and its children) can't be linked to personal and a linked folder (and its children) can't be synced. Note that "linking" also "syncs" it, just in a different location.
- Twisell 4y ago
  Well my organization current moto is to create hundred of different sharepoint sites that can contain multiple document libraries to compartmentalize (I personally think it's a really bad idea but i have to comply). So when you happen to work with 10+ Sharepoint sites there is two way to operate if you must sync. 1. Click sync on the document library. Then each sync while need a configuration entry in One Drive and each sync will create it's own background worker. Prioritization between sync/mounts point must happen somehow but if you open 10+ I experienced lot's of sync error/delay. Sync parameters to each sharepoint have to be defined manually and independently on all your devices. 2.You can add a "shortcut" pointing to the sharepoint into your organization (personal) OneDrive. The configuration is then stored on your OneDrive profile, it's synchronized across all you device and the OneDrive webapp. You can move the shortcut around (inside your OneDrive) and rename the folder as you which. It only require one background worker that don't compete for system ressources with others. I was initially configured using solution 1 and experienced many conflict/lag/bug. Since I implemented aolution 2 everything is (almost) flawless. So the question remain why do they offer two concuring implementations one of which can lead to madness... legacy support I guess.

ryandrake 4y ago

> the right play might be to have a machine on another platform, like Linux or Windows, manage your file sync, then to just access it on your local network. I mean, the Internet has known for a long time that 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…

shortformblog 4y ago
I know you’re being sarcastic and highlighting an infamous comment but I sort of feel like that’s what we’re being driven back to.