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"Dropbox engineers even hacked their way into Apple's file system to make the Dropbox icon appear on users' menu bars, a bold feat that blew away Apple's cloud

by krigath 15y ago

"Dropbox engineers even hacked their way into Apple's file system to make the Dropbox icon appear on users' menu bars, a bold feat that blew away Apple's cloud team and caught the attention of none other than Jobs." I have never made an application which does it, but I know of plenty that do (e.g. Evernote). Is it really that difficult?

eurleif 15y ago
No. Not at all. And it has nothing to do with "hacking Apple's file system". There's an API for it.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- shaggyfrog 15y ago
  Is the API available for all versions of OS X? If not, when the API first appear?
wallflower 15y ago
The Finder, not the menu bar. I think it was a pretty impressive hack. Mach Code Injection! (talked about at 15:30) http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how-dropbox-did-it-and-how-python-helped-4896698 http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how... https://github.com/rianhunter/mach_star https://github.com/rianhunter/mach_star
tednaleid 15y ago
I wonder if this is a mistake. I thought the hack was not the menu bar but messing with the icons in the finder so they have a status icon on top of the normal file icon (so a checkbox if they're uploaded to the server). That's quite a bit less common than menu bar changes and I think when they first did it, there was not an API for it (not sure if there is now in Lion).
gigantor 15y ago
It is quite difficult, as well as painstaking. I can't find the article where Drew Houston was mentioning this, but because the API method wasn't available, they had to use a hex editor and alter the memory location to get the functionality to appear in the finder. And they needed to do this for every version of OS X as the Finder memory address to inject the assembler/C code would be in different locations depending on the version. The process would be similar to writing a crack for software to find the algorithm for the serial key check. Besides Dropbox being a great service, what got Steve Job's attention was the fact that the internal cloud team was impressed on how Dropbox managed to do this, since they themselves couldn't get the OS X team's cooperation for a similar feature. Edit: found the article - http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/12/backdrop-dropbox/all/1 http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/12/backdrop-dropbox/all/...

by krigath 15y ago

eurleif 15y ago

No. Not at all. And it has nothing to do with "hacking Apple's file system". There's an API for it.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
shaggyfrog 15y ago
Is the API available for all versions of OS X? If not, when the API first appear?

wallflower 15y ago

The Finder, not the menu bar. I think it was a pretty impressive hack. Mach Code Injection! (talked about at 15:30) http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how-dropbox-did-it-and-how-python-helped-4896698 http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how... https://github.com/rianhunter/mach_star https://github.com/rianhunter/mach_star

tednaleid 15y ago

I wonder if this is a mistake. I thought the hack was not the menu bar but messing with the icons in the finder so they have a status icon on top of the normal file icon (so a checkbox if they're uploaded to the server). That's quite a bit less common than menu bar changes and I think when they first did it, there was not an API for it (not sure if there is now in Lion).

gigantor 15y ago

It is quite difficult, as well as painstaking. I can't find the article where Drew Houston was mentioning this, but because the API method wasn't available, they had to use a hex editor and alter the memory location to get the functionality to appear in the finder. And they needed to do this for every version of OS X as the Finder memory address to inject the assembler/C code would be in different locations depending on the version. The process would be similar to writing a crack for software to find the algorithm for the serial key check. Besides Dropbox being a great service, what got Steve Job's attention was the fact that the internal cloud team was impressed on how Dropbox managed to do this, since they themselves couldn't get the OS X team's cooperation for a similar feature. Edit: found the article - http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/12/backdrop-dropbox/all/1 http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/12/backdrop-dropbox/all/...