Dropbox Beta for Mac Adds Automatic Screenshot Sharing and More

Good app, simple and efficient (and cross platform).

It would be wonderful if Apple could learn how to make iCloud do what's its supposed to. Sometimes it does, other times it doesn't. I thought it might be better than my two years on MobileMe, but it's not.

I still think that after a few more years of experience Apple will get it right. In the mean time I've had terrific service from Dropbox. I first stated using Dropbox a few years ago when I couldn't get my MobileMe sync restored. Finally a week later Apple fixed it. That proves they are trying. They are simply having trouble relating to the cloud.

I'm not seeing the value of these new features, but I don't mind as as far as I can tell, Dropbox is already pretty darned near perfect... Certainly it's the best of the cloud storage solutions I've tried.

The one major feature they could add that I would really like is the ability to prioritize certain files. In an ideal world, Dropbox will always be perfectly in sync, but we don't live in an ideal world so that can't be the case. I'd like to be able to designate some folders as having higher priority than others. IE, my work folder is more important than my pictures folder and should always be synced first, and the pictures folder should be saved for last.

Sometimes my connection is spotty and I really need Dropbox to do its best to make sure my work is synced... This isn't always the case. Sometimes during the few seconds out of an hour that it has to sync, it decides to sync less important things.

Awesome news. I use LittleSnapper for screen shots but haven't as much as the services for sharing folders it worked with shut down. This is perfect.

Apple, buy Dropbox! I know you tried, but try again dang it, Google Drive and others have great sharing capabilities and iDisk needs a replacement.

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ArtOfWarfare said:

The one major feature they could add that I would really like is the ability to prioritize certain files. In an ideal world, Dropbox will always be perfectly in sync, but we don't live in an ideal world so that can't be the case. I'd like to be able to designate some folders as having higher priority than others. IE, my work folder is more important than my pictures folder and should always be synced first, and the pictures folder should be saved for last.

Sometimes my connection is spotty and I really need Dropbox to do its best to make sure my work is synced... This isn't always the case. Sometimes during the few seconds out of an hour that it has to sync, it decides to sync less important things.

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There is a way, I read a thread with someone requesting the same thing and a solution. Ugh I wish I bookmarked it. I'll search around again for it.

Excellent news. Dropbox is one of the best cloud-based sharing tools around! This will be perfect for detailing how to accomplish certain functionality when I'm helping a less-experienced Mac user over the web.

... assuming of course this feature makes it out of beta.

MacRumors said:

Another new feature is an "Import from iPhoto" option that will allow users to easily see whether they have photos in their iPhoto libraries to upload to Dropbox and create separate Dropbox albums to correspond to iPhoto albums and events.

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That's awesome. I wonder if this will work for users who keep their entire iPhoto library in Dropbox.

Cool. That's especially convenient for Windows because you normally have to open MS Paint and paste the screenshot into there then save to even get a file.

Now for the problems: It doesn't support multiple monitors. I hate the new menu bar interface. The old one was a lot better. Also, how about a built-in Git host?

If they'd only fix the long file name problem on the iOS app , I'd be a happy camper.

haven't tried these beta features yet, but dropbox is indeed awesome.

Still waiting for Dropbox to add the most useful feature: a reasonable pricing plan. I know so many people who would buy Dropbox if there was something like 10GB-25GB plans. They have a bit too much data for the free plan, but would never get close to utilizing the 50 GB plan, which is overkill and expensive.

bedifferent said:

Apple, buy Dropbox! I know you tried, but try again dang it, Google Drive and others have great sharing capabilities and iDisk needs a replacement.

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For the love of God, no. I'm pretty sure Dropbox wants to be independent and it should stay that way. If Apple bought it as an iCloud replacement, they'd kill off cross-platform. That's why Dropbox is so awesome: It's cross-platform and it's fast.

No, if Apple is going to do anything with Dropbox, it should be a partnership. Build in deeper integration with Dropbox (Mac & iOS) and bundle 2 years of free upgraded storage (50 or 100GB would be nice) with every Mac, iPhone & iPad.

toaster64 said:

Cool. That's especially convenient for Windows because you normally have to open MS Paint and paste the screenshot into there then save to even get a file.

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In Windows 8 you can just press Windows Key + Print Screen and it'll be saved into your pictures library automatically.

ArtOfWarfare said:

...
The one major feature they could add that I would really like is the ability to prioritize certain files. In an ideal world, Dropbox will always be perfectly in sync, but we don't live in an ideal world so that can't be the case. I'd like to be able to designate some folders as having higher priority than others. IE, my work folder is more important than my pictures folder and should always be synced first, and the pictures folder should be saved for last.
...

Click to expand...

bedifferent said:

...
There is a way, I read a thread with someone requesting the same thing and a solution. Ugh I wish I bookmarked it. I'll search around again for it.

Click to expand...

Basically, it's about checking/un-checking folders to sync in your (desktop) Dropbox prefs pane, under the "Advance" tab.
You un-check the less important folders, sync your Dropbox and go back to check the un-checked folders. It's a patch but it's (almost) what you want.

I love Dropbox. So much that I purchased their 100GB plan and use about 60% of it. Without the plan, I'd have 41GB's of free storage thanks to all the referrals, social networking bonuses, Camera Upload bonus, etc. I like that they are trying to do with Photos, but their moving slow on it. This maybe the default way I share photos and albums in the future as it keeps the photos off of Facebook's servers. I do wonder what's happening with Audiogalaxy that was purchased.

With apps, I always opt for the Dropbox sync if available. iCloud is too much of a mess and WAY too closed off from outside the iOS platform for it to be worth a damn. I only use it to backup my iPhone and iPad.

ArtOfWarfare said:

...

The one major feature they could add that I would really like is the ability to prioritize certain files. In an ideal world, Dropbox will always be perfectly in sync, but we don't live in an ideal world so that can't be the case. I'd like to be able to designate some folders as having higher priority than others. IE, my work folder is more important than my pictures folder and should always be synced first, and the pictures folder should be saved for last.

...

Click to expand...

Vote on it, only 8 more to go!

https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/33/syncing-priority

I use my own app to share/post screenshots. But I can see how this could be useful for other people who don't have it.

As others have said, this is just a minor improvement. The big picture is that Dropbox is basically perfect for the most important stuff, and I'm very happy using it.

jdechko said:

For the love of God, no. I'm pretty sure Dropbox wants to be independent and it should stay that way. If Apple bought it as an iCloud replacement, they'd kill off cross-platform. That's why Dropbox is so awesome: It's cross-platform and it's fast.

No, if Apple is going to do anything with Dropbox, it should be a partnership. Build in deeper integration with Dropbox (Mac & iOS) and bundle 2 years of free upgraded storage (50 or 100GB would be nice) with every Mac, iPhone & iPad.

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Yet, Jobs wanted FaceTime to become cross platform but faced (pun intended ) patent infringement lawsuits from VirnetX which stopped that from happening. iCloud is cross platform, so I don't know why you may believe Apple would kill Dropbox from being cross platform. Apple wants to sell more devices, making it less accessible across systems would kill sales.

f00f said:

Vote on it, only 8 more to go!

https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/33/syncing-priority

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Voted.

What makes you say that only 8 more votes are necessary? Last I checked there wasn't any special number of votes needed...

ArtOfWarfare said:

Voted.

What makes you say that only 8 more votes are necessary? Last I checked there wasn't any special number of votes needed...

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Brain fart. It's the number of votes I have left to cast. Whoops.

bedifferent said:

iCloud is cross platform, so I don't know why you may believe Apple would kill Dropbox from being cross platform. Apple wants to sell more devices, making it less accessible across systems would kill sales.

Click to expand...

iCloud is cross-platform in the same way that FaceTime is cross platform (ok, maybe a little more so). But that's not what I was referring to. I can install a dropbox client on Mac/PC/Linux for desktops and iOS/Android/Blackberry/Windows Phone, not to mention a solid web interface. Any app is free to integrate the dropbox API, whether it is sold through official app stores or not.

Full iCloud integration is only available on Mac & iOS and only on apps purchased through the respective stores. Angry Birds, for instance, relies on their own syncing service because they value cross platform game play.

For all the issues there were with iDisk, at least it was standard WebDAV storage, which meant it could be mounted as a network drive on Windows/Linux. As far as generic cross-platform data storage goes, iCloud sucks. Sorry, but Steve Jobs got this one wrong.

As far as limiting access, that's exactly how Apple drives sales. Do something cool, make it available only on your products and force people to chose your product if they want to use your service. That's the exact model for iTunes.

HiRez said:

Still waiting for Dropbox to add the most useful feature: a reasonable pricing plan. I know so many people who would buy Dropbox if there was something like 10GB-25GB plans. They have a bit too much data for the free plan, but would never get close to utilizing the 50 GB plan, which is overkill and expensive.

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I total agree! I was just talking about this very thing with a business partner over lunch today. I love using Dropbox for my photos. But I only need 10 maybe 20 gigs. I'm only using 3 gigs now. I really don't want to pay $99 when I don't need that much.

I've been a big fan of GrabBox which does the same thing as this feature, uploads your screenshots to Dropbox, and then copies the URL to your clipboard. So I was excited to see this addition to Dropbox...until I tried it. Unfortunately, I hate that my URL isn't automatically shortened with this feature like GrabBox does. I also really hate the "utility bar" at the top of each URL.

So I guess I'll keep using GrabBox. The system overhead is close to nothing, so I'm going to disable the feature in Dropbox and use GrabBox.

Dropbox, at least offer us the choice of shortening the URL.

HiRez said:

Still waiting for Dropbox to add the most useful feature: a reasonable pricing plan. I know so many people who would buy Dropbox if there was something like 10GB-25GB plans. They have a bit too much data for the free plan, but would never get close to utilizing the 50 GB plan, which is overkill and expensive.

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especially when so many similar but not as good services give free space.

i got my dropbox up to i think 18.5 gigs of space, but i often change what i have stored in there as theres not enough space for my photos, ebooks, work files, wifes work files etc....

i tried various, google drive, amazon drive, but never a huge amount of space.

now ive got a box.com account with free 50 gigs of space. its very similar to dropbox but not as good in a few ways. however its good enough that i would never pay for dropbox, but if i could have even 25 gigs free with dropbox that would be fine.

MacRumors said:

As noted by MacStories, Dropbox yesterday unveiled new beta versions of its desktop clients, bringing several new features to Mac users…

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… such as, first and foremost, NSA PRISM support.