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Dropbox May Have Declined $800 Million Acquisition Offer from Apple
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And if I want to access files whilst on the road I upload them to my dropbox which costs me all of £0. AUHEUHEUHEUHEUHE
I firmly say that as a loyal, loving, and active user of Dropbox, I could care less about iCloud. It's probably fair to say that many users of Dropbox were falling asleep during Apple's WWDC Keynote... These are features that we've always had.... Why re-invent the wheel Apple?!
It's a big deal if you use multiple computers, and multiple OSs. I share files between 8-core PowerMacs at work, an iMac and a MacBook Air at home, an iPhone, and an iPad. Not only is the external drive not an option in this scenario (for iOS), but cloud storage is more convenient than moving a drive around. Plus, using something like Dropbox, it's automatically backed up in multiple places (the server plus locally on each device), and files store version history which can be reverted at will.
I don't know if I'll boycott iCloud, but after using it on my iPhone for a while, I find it to be pretty useless. You can't share with others. I can't send a link to files.
It's far worse than MobileMe. However, with MobileMe, you can only share your public folder.
Besides that, I'm not really thrilled with the new saving options (lack of options) in the Lion Apps. I'm very confused by it. I like being able to save different versions, not autosave after changes. It's not intuitive at all.
Done ranting.
maxing out on storage with Dropbox
I'm almost maxing out on storage with Dropbox free 2GB offer (technically 2.25GB). If Dropbox won't increase its free 2GB offer when iCloud comes out, guess where I'm going.
I can see a lot of Mac users dropping Dropbox once iCloud becomes available, including myself. I don't see a viable business model with cloud storage unless it is part a large service like music, photo and video. I suspect greater 99% of Dropbox users use their free 2.25GB offer, and only a handful make use of the pay service.
I'm almost maxing out on storage with Dropbox free 2GB offer (technically 2.25GB). If Dropbox won't increase its free 2GB offer when iCloud comes out, guess where I'm going.
I can see a lot of Mac users dropping Dropbox once iCloud becomes available, including myself. I don't see a viable business model with cloud storage unless it is part a large service like music, photo and video. I suspect greater 99% of Dropbox users use their free 2.25GB offer, and only a handful make use of the pay service.
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And it you don't expect to want to access it (and therefore don't bring the $20 thumb drive with you), but you have a serendipitous opportunity where it would be beneficial to do so?
That is the point of cloud storage. You have access to it pretty much *anywhere, any time*, whether you expected to need access to it, or not.
I'm almost maxing out on storage with Dropbox free 2GB offer (technically 2.25GB). If Dropbox won't increase its free 2GB offer when iCloud comes out, guess where I'm going.
I can see a lot of Mac users dropping Dropbox once iCloud becomes available, including myself. I don't see a viable business model with cloud storage unless it is part a large service like music, photo and video. I suspect greater 99% of Dropbox users use their free 2.25GB offer, and only a handful make use of the pay service.
The default is just 2GB. That extra 250MB means you were referred. You see DropBox gives an additional 250MB to those who refer others as well as the ones being referred. You can get up to 6GB of additional free storage through referrals.
I'm almost maxing out on storage with Dropbox free 2GB offer (technically 2.25GB). If Dropbox won't increase its free 2GB offer when iCloud comes out, guess where I'm going.
I can see a lot of Mac users dropping Dropbox once iCloud becomes available, including myself. I don't see a viable business model with cloud storage unless it is part a large service like music, photo and video. I suspect greater 99% of Dropbox users use their free 2.25GB offer, and only a handful make use of the pay service.
It's actually a brilliant business model. By making it free for the average user, they've made themselves ubiquitous. Then you only need a small percentage of those users to be paying ones to be profitable. If you're already a Dropbox user at home, you're more likely to use that in your business, and you'll pay for it.
By the way, through referrals, I have over 7GB of free space. That's another smart thing they've done. You can add more free space by referring people to Dropbox.
By making themselves THE goto cloud service (by making it free for most users) they've pretty much guaranteed themselves to be profitable.
Ubiquity doesn't necessary translate into profit, but of course only time will tell. Cloud computing is in its infancy and who knows how things will evolve.
Yes, you can get a lot more storage through referrals or if you have time and patience you can refer yourself using many identities. Reminds me of Mary Kay business model.
I personally love Dropbox free offer. It is good to know that my files are backup in the cloud, although I must say that I have reservation. Dropbox after all is just a startup and I'm trusting them with important and sensitive files. Again this is something we will have to adjust or get use to.
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I think Dropbox, iCloud etc. are in the process of killing the USB thumb drive. Within 2 to 3 years, Apple will begin to drop the USB ports from their MacBook Air and other Mac products, and people will complain like they do with the optical drive now.
But also requires an internet connection whilst you are "on the road". Dunno about you, but I certainly don't have internet access wherever I am.
I see where you are coming from, but I don't think Dropbox and Groupon are comparable here. Dropbox has an advantage that it has a growing and loyal following. Plus, it installs on machines so people are somewhat entrenched once they create a network especially accross platforms. Both of these are very valuable and Groupon doesn't have either.
The iOS app is capable of caching "favourite" files locally, so you can still access them in case you don't have internet access.
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Would be interesting to see what Apple would've done if they did buy Dropbox. Don't know if it would be good or bad, but would be interesting nonetheless.
A lot of people commenting here don't understand what iDisk is, or how iCloud will change things. iDisk and DropBox are very similar services, with DropBox being the more platform-independent of the two since there is no native version of iDisk for Windows, Android, Blackberry, etc.
I use iDisk to store 2,644 files (a little over 1gb). The files are stored locally on my machine in an iDisk on my desktop, but any changed files are replicated to the cloud every 15 seconds. For example, I can save a spreadsheet on my Mac in the office, then walk to the conference room and pop open the file I just saved on my iPhone/iPad. I do the same thing every night when I go home and have instant access to the latest versions of all my documents. I sync my files this way between 5 Macs, two iPhones and an iPad and I access them from Windows machines via the web. I also routinely share files via iDisk -- this weekend I was at the top of a mountain when a colleague needed a file, and I was able to pull it up on iDisk on my iPhone and share it with her with password protection.
iDisk did have some challenges right after the launch of Mobile Me, but they were quickly resolved. It's worked great for me since - the only time I have issues is when I save a document and put my laptop to sleep before it syncs to the cloud (this happens to me maybe once a month, so not very often considering I edit dozens and dozens of files a day).
With iCloud, my take is that Apple isn't really killing off iDisk. What they're doing is creating a more real-time mechanism whereas the applications themselves store the data in the cloud vs in a conventional filesystem. This works for iWork apps, but will soon work with third party apps as they start to consume Apple's iCloud API. This should eliminate the problem I referenced above. I just hope they support sharing.
I have a DropBox account but haven't used it much since I have had iDisk since it launched. I don't have the DropBox app on my iPhone/iPad so I can't comment about them.
I use iDisk to store 2,644 files (a little over 1gb). The files are stored locally on my machine in an iDisk on my desktop, but any changed files are replicated to the cloud every 15 seconds. For example, I can save a spreadsheet on my Mac in the office, then walk to the conference room and pop open the file I just saved on my iPhone/iPad. I do the same thing every night when I go home and have instant access to the latest versions of all my documents. I sync my files this way between 5 Macs, two iPhones and an iPad and I access them from Windows machines via the web. I also routinely share files via iDisk -- this weekend I was at the top of a mountain when a colleague needed a file, and I was able to pull it up on iDisk on my iPhone and share it with her with password protection.
iDisk did have some challenges right after the launch of Mobile Me, but they were quickly resolved. It's worked great for me since - the only time I have issues is when I save a document and put my laptop to sleep before it syncs to the cloud (this happens to me maybe once a month, so not very often considering I edit dozens and dozens of files a day).
With iCloud, my take is that Apple isn't really killing off iDisk. What they're doing is creating a more real-time mechanism whereas the applications themselves store the data in the cloud vs in a conventional filesystem. This works for iWork apps, but will soon work with third party apps as they start to consume Apple's iCloud API. This should eliminate the problem I referenced above. I just hope they support sharing.
I have a DropBox account but haven't used it much since I have had iDisk since it launched. I don't have the DropBox app on my iPhone/iPad so I can't comment about them.
Great. It's still easier to use a memory stick in my opinion. Then I don't need to get an iPhone.
Ubiquity doesn't necessarily translate to profit (Twitter, for example), but if you have a viable way to get money out of that popularity (which they do) then you're doing well. Where they'll make their money is with small businesses who will find it more cost effective to use Dropbox than buy a bunch of servers that will have to be maintained and replaced regularly. And the reason they'll pick Dropbox is because everyone knows it and uses it. And because it makes collaborating in different cities simple.
As for Dropbox's security, I trust them about as much as I trust someone hacking into my own computer. It's a reality of the times, unfortunately.
As for the USB thumbdrive, I don't use them anymore. And the ONLY thing I use my optical drive for is to rip my DVD collection to put on Plex.
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But you need a computer to put the memory stick in. And what happens if you need a file that isn't on the memory stick?
By the way, you don't need an iPhone to get your files from Dropbox. Any smartphone will do, or you can log into your account on any computer.
drop.io
I used to use drop.io for file sync/sharing. Supposedly Facebook bought it last year, but they don't seem to have done anything with it. Dropbox is fine, but I thought that drop.io had a better interface.
I used to use drop.io for file sync/sharing. Supposedly Facebook bought it last year, but they don't seem to have done anything with it. Dropbox is fine, but I thought that drop.io had a better interface.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)
If dropbox did WebDAV support I'd be really happy.
If dropbox did WebDAV support I'd be really happy.
Amazon S3 doesn't support WebDAV, and until they do, "they're going no where near your wiener".
I don't know about thumb drives, but a ZoomIt is supposed to allow using an SD card with an iPhone; the reader plugs into the dock port. Only works with their apps or with built-in apps that support "open with" i.e. open with the support of one of their apps, due to the sandboxing between apps on an iPhone. Still, it's supposed to let you watch videos and to some degree sync stuff (although without jailbreak I'm not sure that you could actually copy between onboard files and files on the SD, and you certainly couldn't copy songs off of the iPhone, although you can always use something like Senuti for that).
You think the USB port is used only for thumb drives? Not for CD, external HDD, ethernet dongles, etc etc etc. I doubt TB will fully replace USB as the new standard interface anytime soon, especially with all the USB 2/3 devices on the market.
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that's how I feel but people are going nuts over these cloud computing stuff. Were considered ancient with our non-cloud storage and pre-paid dumb phones by our nerd comrades.