I did some quick research on dropbox replacements and sync.com gets a lot of good reviews, costs less than dropbox, and runs native on apple silicon. If the block level changes thing is a deal breaker then pcloud is the way to go.
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Dropbox Planning to Add Native Apple Silicon Support to Mac App in First Half of 2022 [Updated]
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Just set up your own NAS and be done with cloud storage. If you still want/need the cloud for off site storage, TrueNAS has built in cloud sync with any number of providers.
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Whoa, kind of amazing what you can keep using if you keep an older system in operation.
The other kind of situation where I've seen people keep old machines and OSes running is to keep compatibility with certain hardware. I know some people who have an old printing machine (a kind of color-process copier great for art prints) called a Risograph, and they keep an ancient PC around specifically because it can run the old software that interfaces with it.
Overall, kind of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" ethos.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Yes, I'm certainly not the only one hanging on to a Snow Leopard with Rosetta 1 for one reason or another. If anyone is interested, try a search for Snow Leopard and look at the threads. Even quick glance, you'll see many from even the last few days/weeks that are trying to reinstall Snow Leopard on an old Mac... even people buying old Macs expressly for that purpose... often DOWNGRADING the OS TO Snow Leopard.
Often it seems to be some favored games but certain apps did not survive Rosetta 1 deprecation, so it was either hang on to an old Mac or just give up on those completely. Or maybe Snow Leopard Server in a virtual machine might work per an earlier suggestion in this thread, but as offered that would be Parallels Intel Mac emulation running Snow Leopard Server running Rosetta 1 which is basically emulating pre-Intel OS X
A time machine back to 2010 might be easier to get working.
I suspect many favorite games from a few years ago and back will probably not survive the end of Rosetta 2. And I bet a few apps important to some won't either. So there will be another "legacy" Mac- perhaps these current ones- that may need to be retained after they are deemed vintage... to keep Rosetta 2 and thus a link to the past.
In my case, I have another tier of vintage Mac hanging on to 10.13.6 because I don't want to lose the entire Adobe Creative Suite usage for non-subscription FREE. I don't use those apps enough to pay Adobe the subscription fee they want but I do need them sometimes... especially when clients send files in those formats. Kludgy but necessary Dreamweaver is still not native. The great Fireworks is dead (but still works fine on that Mac). Etc. Yes, there are alternatives for many- but not all- features of both of those. For example Pixelmator is beyond terrific in so many ways but Fireworks and Photoshop has a few features it lacks that are needed sometimes.
Since Bootcamp/Windows is also a business necessity (not because I love it but because most clients & peers use Windows, Windows files and some Windows-only apps), that 10.13.6 Mac will cover that too... readily upgraded to latest Windows 10 and I haven't yet checked if it can go to 11.
I welcome progress and Silicon is fannnnnnnnnntastic... but work is work and tools needed for work don't always survive Mac/macOS evolutions.
Often it seems to be some favored games but certain apps did not survive Rosetta 1 deprecation, so it was either hang on to an old Mac or just give up on those completely. Or maybe Snow Leopard Server in a virtual machine might work per an earlier suggestion in this thread, but as offered that would be Parallels Intel Mac emulation running Snow Leopard Server running Rosetta 1 which is basically emulating pre-Intel OS X
A time machine back to 2010 might be easier to get working.I suspect many favorite games from a few years ago and back will probably not survive the end of Rosetta 2. And I bet a few apps important to some won't either. So there will be another "legacy" Mac- perhaps these current ones- that may need to be retained after they are deemed vintage... to keep Rosetta 2 and thus a link to the past.
In my case, I have another tier of vintage Mac hanging on to 10.13.6 because I don't want to lose the entire Adobe Creative Suite usage for non-subscription FREE. I don't use those apps enough to pay Adobe the subscription fee they want but I do need them sometimes... especially when clients send files in those formats. Kludgy but necessary Dreamweaver is still not native. The great Fireworks is dead (but still works fine on that Mac). Etc. Yes, there are alternatives for many- but not all- features of both of those. For example Pixelmator is beyond terrific in so many ways but Fireworks and Photoshop has a few features it lacks that are needed sometimes.
Since Bootcamp/Windows is also a business necessity (not because I love it but because most clients & peers use Windows, Windows files and some Windows-only apps), that 10.13.6 Mac will cover that too... readily upgraded to latest Windows 10 and I haven't yet checked if it can go to 11.
I welcome progress and Silicon is fannnnnnnnnntastic... but work is work and tools needed for work don't always survive Mac/macOS evolutions.
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Back in the day there was Copy cloud service, advertised as reliable because it's from Barracuda Networks. Basic free storage was 15 Gb, with 5 Gb per refferal, and paid options were advertised as lot cheaper than Dropbox. The service went down after few years.
There are plenty of cheap and generous solutions around, but it takes time and effort for any of them to become reliable.
Microwave ovens. Electronics from the past.
Because you don't use it doesn't make it obsolete.
Funny there is no post with single explanation why is Dropbox so bad, apart from "some strange decisions" and funny oneliners.
It often takes closer to a gigabyte of RAM to keep the official Dropbox client running. Part of that may be Rosetta. The rest, that's just Dropbox these days. People who push their computers to the 8/16 GB limit could really use that last GB of memory.
Installing Maestral.app as a replacement might work for some. It can do selective sync, but not sync-on-demand. It has a tiny footprint compared to the official Dropbox client. Anyone using it and merging the Dropbox folder should first ensure that everything is already in sync. Starting from scratch with Maestral is also an option. Obviously this approach is extremely un-supported by Dropbox, making it less than ideal for business-critical use. It can keep the drives in sync, but almost all add-on features (some may consider it bloat) are out of the window.
First half of next year for what should be a simple recompile? They must have serious portability issues with their code. I used to see this in old C codebases that would assume they ran on a VAX (or today, on an x86) and took liberties on that assumption. The ones I was familiar with have long since been fixed of course, and it takes little programming discipline to avoid making such assumptions in your code.
Great point.
Actually, Dropbox IS going to support Apple Silicon.
Good news as I find it great for my needs.
I'm surprised to see how much passion there is for Dropbox in this thread given the pricing and features of competitors (eg. Office 365 is significantly cheaper and includes more users/storage and includes Office apps and Skype credit too).
I've slowly moved away from it particularly given the 3 device limit on free accounts which made me pay a disproportionate amount to upgrade for a month each time I needed to add a new device just so I could access my 1Password vault. Eventually I found 1Password Families made more financial sense.
I've slowly moved away from it particularly given the 3 device limit on free accounts which made me pay a disproportionate amount to upgrade for a month each time I needed to add a new device just so I could access my 1Password vault. Eventually I found 1Password Families made more financial sense.
Dropbox dropped. There are so many options these days, they are no longer the only player in cloud storage.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Over the years of using Dropbox, I've piled up substantial free space. So my Dropbox cost is FREE.
How much is Office 365?
Now agreed, if I had to pay for more sharable storage than I have, there are other options that cost less. So I can choose to use those when I need more. How often do I need more? RARELY. Otherwise, Dropbox is pretty much universal such that anyone that needs to use those kind of features can use Dropbox. Can iCloud do that? With everyone?
Yes, there are other options competing with Dropbox for similar services. And some of those do work well with everyone too. It's good to have many choices... and for those many options to work on Macs so that we don't need to buy non-Apple stuff to use them too.
I'm surprised to see how much anti-passion there is. I'm not completely surprised because many seem to think that iCloud and Dropbox are exactly the same... so naturally the Apple version is far superior in every possible way. But much like things like Skype & Zoom, Dropbox works with everything and everyone and there are far more Windows PCs out there than Macs.
Anyone like me- working Mac people- serving clients knows the value of Dropbox (in any form) being functional on our Macs. Even if we could HATE it in every possible way, countless others use it. If we want to serve (and make money from) clients that want to connect that way, we need to be able to use it too. I have great clients that I can't move to throw out all of their Windows/Android "junk" because I want them to use only Apple services, so I adapt to what those clients need. It's nice to be able to do that- and make money (the non-Apple client money too)- with Macs.
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So funny that people were complaining that their preferred cloud service was not running natively immediately at launch and they are still barely catching up with the native support. Don't buy into a whole new architecture or at least experiment first if your business relies on specific software or if you can't wait for compatibility updates! Don't just take the plunge like an average non-business user. Sure, some apps were available natively not long after launch, but not all apps and software are the same beast. Some take more time and resources than others to update properly. The layman can't seem to wrap their head around it.
I work as a software developer and I can't tell you how many times we get "I need this really really simple app that does x, y, and z. Really simple. Can't take that long to build, right? Shouldn't cost more than x, right?" I want to look at those people and ask them, "what experience do you have that would make you think so confidently that this is simple?" It might seem simple on the surface, but there are sooooo many things the user doesn't see behind the scenes.
I work as a software developer and I can't tell you how many times we get "I need this really really simple app that does x, y, and z. Really simple. Can't take that long to build, right? Shouldn't cost more than x, right?" I want to look at those people and ask them, "what experience do you have that would make you think so confidently that this is simple?" It might seem simple on the surface, but there are sooooo many things the user doesn't see behind the scenes.
I still don’t get why the big deal out of making Dropbox apple silicon native though since this is a microscopically small app in comparison to high performing ones like FCP, Motion, Blender, assorted engineering simulators, photohop, etc, etc… I don’t see direct tangible benefit from going all in native in a rush.
That’s like all the electron and wrappers around chat apps and even IDEs or python/scripted based applications, yes sure, it isn’t direct C++ optimized code, but for what it does even if it is 2x, 5x, 10x less efficient it won’t move the needle.
That’s like all the electron and wrappers around chat apps and even IDEs or python/scripted based applications, yes sure, it isn’t direct C++ optimized code, but for what it does even if it is 2x, 5x, 10x less efficient it won’t move the needle.
There is already an internal build that runs natively on M1. It will be available publicly way before June 2022. Don't even worry about it.
Plus as a 365 subscriber, that OneDrive storage is a whopping 1TB.
It does require them to rebuild. Maybe their builds are broken for unrelated reasons, haha.
pcloud is much better than dropbox with 2tb lifetime subscription, cheap price, Swiss based company and support m1 natively. https://www.pcloud.com/
For people switching from Dropbox to Drive, how do you use dropbox? I found Drive to be really slow, and a resource hog when it comes to syncing(even more than dropbox), nor does it have some of the easy sharing features. Dropbox also syncs much faster since it doesn't have to sync whole files when they change.
If there is a better solution I'll take it, but Dropbox sure seems a lot faster.
If there is a better solution I'll take it, but Dropbox sure seems a lot faster.