Dropbox works equally well across platforms with near 0 synchronization issues. It's just a folder. They aren't trying to add cloud to their own platform, they don't care what device you use or if you use Apple's word processor or Microsoft or Google Docs.
Dropbox has has a firebase/Parse style API you can use to build applications that store that application data in the cloud.
My favorite Dropbox API uses:
automatic syncing of O'reilly Media books. Whenever O'reilly updates one of their ebooks, I always have the current copy, because O'reilly syncs it with Dropbox.
1Password synching.
automatic Hackpad backups (they had that even before they were bought).
I installed this new app the other day, Trickster from the Mac App store, it automatically detected I was using Dropbox.
But I'll mention some negatives:
Those new recent android apps were really bad and I uninstalled them. Carousel and that other one, I don't even remember what it was now. They were just terrible apps, at least on my Galaxy S4.
I love Dropbox for exactly this reason. I can back up dotfiles, game settings, preferences, my music library... anything anywhere on my disk, as long as I symlink it. It does slow down some operations (since a Dropbox RMI needs to be called whenever one of those files changes) but it's saved me so many times, it's hard to believe.
Some would think this as a normal use-case for a cloud-drive.
It's more than just that since the Android and IOS 1Password apps can sync from Dropbox without Dropbox being installed on the device. They're synching using the dropbox API in those cases I'd think.
1Password's keychain uses resource forks I think, which makes it inherently not cross-platform (or rather, not cross-filesystem) and could explain the incompatibilities.
Not sure what could be the issue with DMGs, though, since that exact issue is pretty much the reason for their existence.
For me it's 'stays connected' For some reason Google Drive will disconnect periodically and there is no reconnect option. You have to exit and restart, and then it needs to re-index everything.
Multiple Dropboxs. New feature, but I can run my work and home dropbox at the same time and they sync to different folders.
Sharing is cleaner. When I invite a Dropbox user to a share, the share appears in their drive. With Google drive, they get access to the share web only but it doesn't sync to their drive. The UI to get it to sync to drive isn't clear, so I end up doing a lot of 'support'
I also find the Google Drive .gdoc files bizarre. They aren't actual files, users don't understand you can't copy them out of the drive to back them up, etc.
Insync[1] does a good job of solving this, the google docs files are the microsoft equivalent, e.g. spreadsheets sync as excel files (note I'm not affiliated in any way).
I really wish all the Dropbox clients on a LAN would coordinate and not all download the same file from Dropbox.
We had our three work machines all downloading a ~400MB file the other day. No reason Dropbox couldn't figure that out and have one machine download the file and then distribute over LAN.
I tried BTSync and was blown away by how much faster sync in general and especially LAN sync was. I guess Bittorrent Inc. knows how to properly transfer files.
Comments
Can you give another example than this? Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to justify the huge price difference.
Things that come to mind immediately:
Dropbox works equally well across platforms with near 0 synchronization issues. It's just a folder. They aren't trying to add cloud to their own platform, they don't care what device you use or if you use Apple's word processor or Microsoft or Google Docs.
Dropbox has has a firebase/Parse style API you can use to build applications that store that application data in the cloud.
My favorite Dropbox API uses:
automatic syncing of O'reilly Media books. Whenever O'reilly updates one of their ebooks, I always have the current copy, because O'reilly syncs it with Dropbox.
1Password synching.
automatic Hackpad backups (they had that even before they were bought).
I installed this new app the other day, Trickster from the Mac App store, it automatically detected I was using Dropbox.
But I'll mention some negatives:
Those new recent android apps were really bad and I uninstalled them. Carousel and that other one, I don't even remember what it was now. They were just terrible apps, at least on my Galaxy S4.
Dropbox supports symlinks (and the way you'd expect them to)
I love Dropbox for exactly this reason. I can back up dotfiles, game settings, preferences, my music library... anything anywhere on my disk, as long as I symlink it. It does slow down some operations (since a Dropbox RMI needs to be called whenever one of those files changes) but it's saved me so many times, it's hard to believe.
Woah. This is big news for me. I wonder why this isn't more obvious.
Some would think this as a normal use-case for a cloud-drive.
But since 1Password backups seems to be using a format that Box.com won't upload, they are rejecting the files with this error:
It also means that you can't save .dmg-files.
I don't understand these limitations, Box.coms software feels rock-solid, and then I hit these strange limitations.
Dropbox on the other hand seems to allow all the filetypes I have thrown at them.
It's more than just that since the Android and IOS 1Password apps can sync from Dropbox without Dropbox being installed on the device. They're synching using the dropbox API in those cases I'd think.
Dropbox also has problems with OSX Package files.
Rubitrack is one that caught me out - http://www.rubitrack.com/faq.html
"This is a problem known to Dropbox for many years and it affects not just rubiTrack but hundreds of Mac apps that use a package file format."
1Password's keychain uses resource forks I think, which makes it inherently not cross-platform (or rather, not cross-filesystem) and could explain the incompatibilities.
Not sure what could be the issue with DMGs, though, since that exact issue is pretty much the reason for their existence.
For me it's 'stays connected' For some reason Google Drive will disconnect periodically and there is no reconnect option. You have to exit and restart, and then it needs to re-index everything.
Multiple Dropboxs. New feature, but I can run my work and home dropbox at the same time and they sync to different folders.
Sharing is cleaner. When I invite a Dropbox user to a share, the share appears in their drive. With Google drive, they get access to the share web only but it doesn't sync to their drive. The UI to get it to sync to drive isn't clear, so I end up doing a lot of 'support'
I also find the Google Drive .gdoc files bizarre. They aren't actual files, users don't understand you can't copy them out of the drive to back them up, etc.
Insync[1] does a good job of solving this, the google docs files are the microsoft equivalent, e.g. spreadsheets sync as excel files (note I'm not affiliated in any way).
[1] https://www.insynchq.com/
LAN sync is only available on Dropbox and is incredibly useful.
I really wish all the Dropbox clients on a LAN would coordinate and not all download the same file from Dropbox.
We had our three work machines all downloading a ~400MB file the other day. No reason Dropbox couldn't figure that out and have one machine download the file and then distribute over LAN.
"No reason Dropbox couldn't figure that out and have one machine download the file and then distribute over LAN."
They could have each machine download a chunk and have them swap chunks locally. That would asymptote in time towards a single download.
That would handle cases of the "one" machine going offline close to the end, or having it being the slowest machine available.
In other words, a slightly more managed Bit Torrent.
That's a great idea to handle those sorts of edge cases.
I tried BTSync and was blown away by how much faster sync in general and especially LAN sync was. I guess Bittorrent Inc. knows how to properly transfer files.
It's also available on AeroFS, and it actually works much better on AeroFS. (I still prefer Dropbox to AeroFS because Dropbox is more reliable.)
BTSync has it as well.
Spideroak does LAN sync as well
The Packrat feature is also nice.
https://www.dropbox.com/help/113/en
Packrat is the most important part of Dropbox for me - has saved me countless times when I need an old version of a file.
If you pay for the business account, you get unlimited space. If you actually do use multiple terabytes, then the per-GB cost is pretty good.