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I believe you may have take the quoted out of context. I interpreted that sentence to say that, Dropbox allows the state system to behave the same regardless o

I believe you may have take the quoted out of context. I interpreted that sentence to say that, Dropbox allows the state system to behave the same regardless of the commodity used to interact with it. I do not believe the discussion was about how you interact with the file but how you interact with the storage of the file. I do think that that concept is not quite as disruptive for the industry as is implied though. Also, could you call the "magic" a harbor? Harbor's allow anything to dock and trade regardless of their size, shape, or origin. Only half joking. You are dead on about the barriers of entry though. There are goliath industries out there that will defend there profits to the death, rather than pivot or expand. Not so much the big 3 in my mind, but all of the supporting companies and service providers.

bradleyland 15y ago
I feel pretty confident that the context all supports the point he's making. The lead in is about how wonderfully Dropbox has executed; and they have. Then he states the core point twice linking terms like "indifferent" with "hardware" and "operating system". The point is so central to the piece that he underlined it. Then stated explicitly that it "commoditizes your devices and OS". Then, in the last paragraph uses the term "cross-platform". The author really does believe that "state" is where Dropbox is headed, but I believe there are significant barriers there. Short of an anti-trust suit, I don't see that barrier coming down, which is going to be a significant impediment to Dropbox's ability to offer a "cross-platform" solution.