You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Dropbox MacOS extension supporting > Monterey?
Hi. I've just upgraded my Mac to MacOS Monterey and received the warning below. Apple recommends that I contact Dropbox about this, and though I am a paying customer, the only support mechanism tha...
- Hi GregHutchings, thanks for reaching out.
First of all, please ensure that you're signed into your paid account in order to see all available support options.
This message is about how a component will behave on a future release of a macOS. There's no change in the way Dropbox will work on your computer (and your data will continue to be accessible, too).
We're hard at work on full support for online-only files on future macOS versions. In the meantime, if you have any issues opening online-only content, you can still do so by double clicking on your files in Finder.
Let me know in case you need something else!
I understand that software is hard. I'm a developer myself. However, these changes that Apple is making in macOS are not coming out of the blue. Monterey has existed and been available to developers since June of last year (2021). There are several developer talks about new APIs around file system extensions and other tech that Dropbox needs to adopt to continue being supported. Similarly, the new Apple Silicon platform has been out for even longer, and we just now hear how Dropbox is working hard to bring an app that runs native on M1. To be fair, many companies have struggled to release M1 compatible apps. If available, I'd love more insight into what the engineering challenge is to bring Dropbox up to compatibility with the new file system APIs from Apple.
I really want Dropbox to win. There are so many things I love about it. But the amount of time it takes to even keep up with macOS from a year ago doesn't inspire confidence that Dropbox prioritizes the core experience that users like me are paying for: an awesome, lightweight, always works Desktop integration for file storage. I'm rooting for you, Dropbox! Now go and do the thing.
When Dropbox arrived on the scene, the way they synchronized files across computers was like magic! But these days, that's old hat, and there are lots of competitors. With so many people moving to mobile, and to web based applications, there is less need for synchronization, or even "files" (!). Dropbox, the file synchronizing product, is no longer new, innovative, and exciting (it remains extremely useful, just not "new"), and Dropbox, the company, is struggling to find a way to stay relevant.
So they don't seem to care about the "old" product, even though that is really their bread and butter. They're grasping for some reason, any reason for people to still care about them. So we get ridiculous things like "Paper", while the core product slowly rots. And we are left to wonder if we should stick with Dropbox, or look for alternatives.
