Dropbox Planning to Add Native Apple Silicon Support to Mac App in First Half of 2022 [Updated]

[OS X Dude]

Bit of a mountain out of a molehill; the PR fallout from their community team's responses will impact them far more than the app not yet natively supporting AS will.

Rosetta 2 clearly performs fine enough for Dropbox's basic purpose. If they've got stuff they need to implement with greater priority than a 'just because' architecture change - with no tangible benefit to the end-user compared to how the app performs today under Rosetta 2 - then this makes sense. However, the community respondents need to tell customers that, rather than give generic "this will need more support to escalate" replies.

Disclosure: I use OneDrive.

 

[n-evo]

How is this even a discussion at Dropbox? ?

 

[6787872]

dropbox stopped being relevant 10 years ago. i don't know why anyone would use it in 2021, onedrive and the rest are far superior. 2gb is a joke

 

[MGrayson3]

Let's see. One option won't work on my computer, the other is Google Drive..... I'll go with the one that doesn't work.

 

[Shirasaki]

Somehow I thought that all major programs would have released M1 versions by now. Little did I know.

And more will either take a long time or got ignored altogether. This is just the danger of using macOS: no backwards compatibility guarantee like windows does.

 

[TechRunner]

My DropBox account has but a few odds and ends in it, so I'll just bump them over to one of the three other cloud services I use. I wish them well...

 

[840quadra]

How much processor power does this software even use? Not defending their decision mind you.

Are they drafting their own code to make apps for the Mac as opposed to using X-code? How do they react to security threats on that platform / forum?

 

[Bearxor]

Is this really a big deal right now? Doesn’t the current client work just fine under R2? I think we all know they’ll get an ARM version out eventually but this seems like much ado about nothing at this point.

 

[aajeevlin]

DropBox is still a thing?

I'll say this, in terms of syncing they are rock solid. Fast, and reliable overall. However, their pricing, and lack of more flexible level of plans has really made it so I have never signed up for the paid tier. I have had close to 25GB from their early promotion days that I continued to use until this day. But I won't pay for them, and if I have to I know there are a dozen alternatives out there.

 

[satchmo]

Now with so many other players offering cloud services, Dropbox has...dropped the ball.

What do they do better than other similar services?

 

[mrz_V1]

Bye Bye dropbox from me (9 years personal account) and from my team of developers (15 individual dropbox accounts)

 

[AgentElliot007]

I used to love Dropbox. I’ve found their changes over the last few years to be very user-unfriendly and backwards, much like my experience with 1Password. Both services I use less and less accordingly, and I’ll likely phase them out to better solutions soon. Some of these earlier services that once offered compelling products can’t seem to figure out how to grow as companies without making a mess of their product offerings and pissing off their customers I guess. Good to read I’m not the only one on Dropbox.

 

[827538]

I left DropBox years ago. There's nothing they are doing that Apple, Google, or Microsoft aren't matching or doing better. Quite happy with my iCloud Family storage plan now that Apple seemed to have backed off their CSAM nonsense.

The 2TB iCloud plan with unlimited security cameras has to be one of the best deals going. Plus the way it integrates with all my Apple devices is fantastic.

 

[alexqndr]

Good to know. I have had plans to leave Dropbox for a while. Their app is ridiculous

 

[AgentElliot007]

With 2 TB of iCloud Drive, I haven’t had nearly the need for Dropbox that I used to for any personal cloud storage use. I generally only use Dropbox now if I have to share a file link out. If iCloud Drive would adopt that old MobileMe feature again, Dropbox would disappear to me.

Now with so many other players offering cloud services, Dropbox has...dropped the ball.

What do they do better than other similar services?

 

[knownikko]

FWIW Box’s Apple Silicon support is now out of beta and in the regular production release:

Get a more secure, seamless Box Drive experience across Macs

Box Drive is the perfect solution for users that want to work with their Box files directly from their desktop. It enables users to open, edit, and create Box files directly from their device, and have the content save automatically to the cloud.

blog.box.com

 

[alexe]

This is ridiculous on Dropbox's part.

 

[StrangeNoises]

Bit of a mountain out of a molehill; the PR fallout from their community team's responses will impact them far more than the app not yet natively supporting AS will.

Rosetta 2 clearly performs fine enough for Dropbox's basic purpose. If they've got stuff they need to implement with greater priority than a 'just because' architecture change - with no tangible benefit to the end-user compared to how the app performs today under Rosetta 2 - then this makes sense. However, the community respondents need to tell customers that, rather than give generic "this will need more support to escalate" replies.

Disclosure: I use OneDrive.

from reading the bloody forum thread it looks like the main objection is that it's an energy hog under rosetta 2, battery-draining, and when you consider a big reason people want the apple silicon laptops is for longer battery life, to have that advantage basically cancelled out by dropbox has got to be galling...

 

[andrewxgx]

pretty sure they want to keep using their kernel extension for as long as possible (wanna bet this does a lot more than simply providing dropbox access?) and this is probably not supported at all on native M1 code.

 

[R3k]

Just some Dropbox PR staff are going to get a performance review. 0 chance Dropbox devs aren’t working on a M1 build.

 

[johnmarki]

Let me use this as a pulpit to spew my belief, and use of, a personal NAS! Not as cheap or "easy" as DB or GD, but, after 1-2 years, you'll be free of subscriptions, have 100% control of your media/files/digital life, and free of corporate malware/adware/spyware.

 

[hagar]

I switched to iCloud Drive years ago.
And have free OneDrive from my work.

Dropbox was great back in the day but iCloud is more than sufficient for most Apple users.

 

[dVIAN]

This is definitely not great news. FWIW, Discord is the same story and are insisting the current community vote gets 'enough' traction prior to them considering it. Their app sucks battery running on rosetta2 and they also opted-in to NOT allow their iOS/iPadOS app to run on macOS. It's situations like this where even a small amount of communication goes a long way.

 

[windowsblowsass]

Bit of a mountain out of a molehill; the PR fallout from their community team's responses will impact them far more than the app not yet natively supporting AS will.

Rosetta 2 clearly performs fine enough for Dropbox's basic purpose. If they've got stuff they need to implement with greater priority than a 'just because' architecture change - with no tangible benefit to the end-user compared to how the app performs today under Rosetta 2 - then this makes sense. However, the community respondents need to tell customers that, rather than give generic "this will need more support to escalate" replies.

Disclosure: I use OneDrive.

This is a PR blunder more than anything. Just some boiler plate “we are continually evaluating how to make drip box even better and plan to do whatever we can to give our users the best experience, stay tuned!” Avoids all this

 

[mannyvel]

OneDrive and iCloud are fine replacements. With 1TB for free it's hard to resist OneDrive.