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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

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
        These are two different arguments. You’re arguing for a level of security; I’m arguing that Apple’s implementation did not consider real-world use and leads to end-user compromises that lessen the experience. In particular, I point to the move that you have to now keep the storage on the main drive, and the move to block access to the Mac’s photos library. Neither of these moves were necessary for sandboxing reasons. Both degrade the experience for Dropbox users that may have a folder far larger than the 256GB many base Macs come with. Apple could have accounted for use cases of this nature to allow them to make sense for existing Dropbox users. They didn’t. Sandboxing can be good in theory but completely suck in execution. That, I argue, is what happened here.
        Twisell 4y ago
        Leaving a third party Interfer with Photos library can easily lead to corrupted database and sync error if iCloud Photo library is enabled or worse if someone tried to access "Apple managed Photo library" from 2 different devices at the same time (the latter being a typical use case of dropbox). So this make a lot of sense, if you want to share a photos with drop box you should configure "Apple Photo library" to keep files in place instead of including them in database and sync that folder. Or you are even better using an other photo management app that support ACID database consistency accros dropbox file sharing (which is actually not an easy problem). Actually to share photos with dropbox you are maybe even better off syncing flat jpg files and use applications that don't rely on database at all on your different devices. A friend of mine do the latter and he's happy with that. I can agree however on your last point, it could have been nice to allow cloud storage to be moved to an external HD. Maybe they should bring back this possibility in a futur update. But for the managed photo library nothing currently prevent you from storing your database in an external drive, it's only cloud storage that is forbidden for the previously mentioned concurrency issues. Please keep in mind that Cloud storage is not an external hard drive storage, it's not local, it's not a backup either (I personally backup regularly files on my cloud storage in 2 separates offline external HD and everyone should at least get one. Otherwise you actually have no backup).
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.

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
      These are two different arguments. You’re arguing for a level of security; I’m arguing that Apple’s implementation did not consider real-world use and leads to end-user compromises that lessen the experience. In particular, I point to the move that you have to now keep the storage on the main drive, and the move to block access to the Mac’s photos library. Neither of these moves were necessary for sandboxing reasons. Both degrade the experience for Dropbox users that may have a folder far larger than the 256GB many base Macs come with. Apple could have accounted for use cases of this nature to allow them to make sense for existing Dropbox users. They didn’t. Sandboxing can be good in theory but completely suck in execution. That, I argue, is what happened here.
      - Twisell 4y ago
        Leaving a third party Interfer with Photos library can easily lead to corrupted database and sync error if iCloud Photo library is enabled or worse if someone tried to access "Apple managed Photo library" from 2 different devices at the same time (the latter being a typical use case of dropbox). So this make a lot of sense, if you want to share a photos with drop box you should configure "Apple Photo library" to keep files in place instead of including them in database and sync that folder. Or you are even better using an other photo management app that support ACID database consistency accros dropbox file sharing (which is actually not an easy problem). Actually to share photos with dropbox you are maybe even better off syncing flat jpg files and use applications that don't rely on database at all on your different devices. A friend of mine do the latter and he's happy with that. I can agree however on your last point, it could have been nice to allow cloud storage to be moved to an external HD. Maybe they should bring back this possibility in a futur update. But for the managed photo library nothing currently prevent you from storing your database in an external drive, it's only cloud storage that is forbidden for the previously mentioned concurrency issues. Please keep in mind that Cloud storage is not an external hard drive storage, it's not local, it's not a backup either (I personally backup regularly files on my cloud storage in 2 separates offline external HD and everyone should at least get one. Otherwise you actually have no backup).

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.