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.
At what point will we see a 64 bit version for OS X? It is one of the last of my always running apps that is 32 bits? While many will say it is not necessary to have a 64 bit version that 32 is just ...
So here is a story for Dropbox HQ how a little thing like 32 bit Mac has larger consequences...
My credit card number changed, so my renewal just failed. This triggered a a decision point about DropBox.
I have three gripes with DropBox:
1. The 32 bit on Mac sucks. On any i5/i7 class machine with a spinning drive (even hybrid), the 32 bit disk i/o tanks the entire OS. Especially if you have Google Drive and Dropbox. Booting or waking from sleep SUCKS performance wise, and chokes the whole machine whilst the two services throw your system into severe disk contention as your email and other things are also trying to start and access the disk. 64 bit Google drive is noticeably faster and smoother. Open activity monitor and watch Dropbox chew through 50+ gigs on a plattered drive for 5-10 minutes things are starting up... Pause DropBox and life is smooth as butter.
2. The pricing. The only option is $99 for 1TB of which I am using < 60GB.
3. Sharing a folder with another DropBox user consumes their quota. I completely understand why, however, if I share a > 2GB folder, they are no over quota and now must drop $100 which few want to do. Simple answer: consume my own quota when sharing with others.
These gripes have lead me to this thread while googling for options. This thread has lead me to learn more about how Dropbox competes with other services here: http://www.macworld.com/article/2984743/storage/comparing-iclouds-new-lower-prices-to-the-competition.html
So, the moral of the story is... crappy performance from a seemingly small thing drives a customer away. This drives decision for my colleagues away from the DropBox platform. Currently we have all moved to Google Drive for it's cross platform nature, it's 64 bit, I don't screw friends over when sharing, and has reasonable pricing at 100GB.
I am a Carousel user because culling photos there removes them everywhere. However, as I type, I am downloading the Google Photos for iOS to confirm I can use it as a sufficient shared Photos backup strategy for my family. And all this started with some intransigent attachment the engineering team has to 32 bit apps on Mac, which is losing your longest and best adopters who also are the most likely to influence your next customers.