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

[larob]

Dropbox is the only cloud storage (that I am aware of) that support block level changes. So if you have a 500mb file and you change a few words, Dropbox will only sync the difference versus Google Drive and One Drive which will be forced to resync the entire file. This really sucks when working on large files with frequent changes on slow upload speeds.

 

[Tagbert]

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

Onedrive is also not yet AS compatible and runs under Rosetta.

Dropbox's syncing is still more reliable than Onedrive

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Hm, seems like there is indeed no demand. Less than 2000 votes to support this on their forum. Probably costs way more to develop a new version and keep support up with testing and everything else involved than what they'd lose with the 2000 customers leaving. Get this to 100000 votes, then someone might check the thread every now and then to wait for significant numbers. I'd guess anything between 250k and 500k will get their attention.

 

[Tagbert]

With Google Drive, One Drive, iCloud Drive, Dropbox is looking like a dead man walking.

Onedrive is still on Rosetta, too

 

[nebojsak]

Dropbox still handles versioning and selective sync a million times better than iCloud Drive, but otherwise I just can't justify paying for it and keeping it installed -- especially when a 2TB iCloud plan costs the same and hooks deeply into my Mac and iPhone.

This.

I've been using Dropbox since day one, few years ago switched to 2Tb plan, and I'm more than satisfied. Clean interface, syncing, versioning, seamless integration, it keeps majority of my projects one click away at any moment anywhere, be it Mac or Win machine. I've tried paid GDrive and iCloud options, but their clumsy interface, odd syncing bugs and insane solutions (eg GDrive not allowing to delete all of your stuff at once) turned me away.

I can understand they are sufficient for casual users, but Dropbox is the only major cloud service which worked without a single glitch for me, for more than decade (for business purposes). I must admit I don't know what's the hidden agenda behind this, but we'll see. And in all their rage, folks over there tend to forget about few things:

1. Apple is not the biggest tech company in terms of market share %
2. Dropbox would work absolutely fine with Rosetta.

 

[gregmancuso]

But your Dropbox software still serves its purpose whether it's written for AArch64 or x86-64.

I mean, let's say they take the effort to make it native, what's the benefit to the consumer?

I'm not being snarky here, I legit don't understand why anybody cares about this. How much work does the app actually do, that running it via Rosetta is such a big no-no.

The original point Bug-Creator makes still stands, even if the current x86 software works. Hardware architecture change within the same OS should be relatively simple for the developer. Swap out libraries (if necessary), recompile, test. Apple makes it even easier by providing a switch on the compile in Xcode to target teh app as X86, AS, or Universal. This should be transparent to both developer and users.

Does Dropbox not have a single intern on staff who can recompile the app? Or is there something else going on within the Dropbox code that we should be concerned about? And yes, I admit, that does sound a little tinfoil hat-ty.

 

[Tagbert]

The only reason I even kept my free Dropbox account is because it was the only syncing service Scrivener used, and I needed it for my dissertation writing. Now that the dissertation is done and I’m a Ph.D., I have no reason to keep Dropbox anymore. Their paid services are way overpriced, so this just gives me a reason to ditch them for good. Peace out!

I still use Scrivener and depend on the syncing on dropbox. My password manager also only syncs with Dropbox.

I can change password managers and may just give up syncing on Scrivener.

 

[Bastiaan]

It seems like the Dropbox CEO just tweeted that they will release a native client early next year:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1453762478479843332

Maybe a good thing to add to this article?

 

[posguy99]

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

iCloud is useless because you can't back it up.

OneDrive is useless because it can't even sync Mac filenames reliably (differences in allowed characters, Unicode normalization problems, etc). It can take hours to even figure out there's something that needs to be synced.

Whoever at Google that signed off on the recent changes to the Drive client needs to have their head examined.

I haven't used Box in a long time, don't know how bad they are these days.

 

[BrightDarkSky]

It seems like the Dropbox CEO just tweeted that they will release a native client early next year:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1453762478479843332

Maybe a good thing to add to this article?

Yeah something about the story just didn't make any sense. Unlike many in this thread who seem to hate Dropbox - aside from a few syncing issues as of late, it still my essential service next to Evernote.

So yeah I won't be giving these guys up anytime soon. In the meantime you guys have fun spamming these other apps in the thread like we don't know that you're shills for the company or possibly work there.

 

[200megaton]

Dropbox appears to have no plans to natively support Apple silicon Macs, almost a year after the first Macs with the M1 chip became available.

An official Dropbox support thread, shared by Mitchell Hashimoto on Twitter, reveals a fiasco around native support for Apple silicon Macs. Dropbox is seemingly insisting that a significant number of community members will have to vote for native Apple silicon support for it to be implemented. There are also multiple repetitious requests with different phrasing, fragmenting users' votes for support.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1453394500848537605

In July, responses from Dropbox staff on the thread explained that "this idea is going to need a bit more support before we share your suggestion with our team," and flagged Apple silicon support as in need of more votes. A month ago, Dropbox staff again replied to the thread requesting native Apple silicon support, saying that Dropbox will continue to be compatible with all devices that run supported versions of macOS using Apple's Rosetta translation layer.

Additional complaints in the thread claim that Dropbox with Rosetta hemorrhages MacBook battery life and uses a disproportionate amount of memory.

While Dropbox could still natively support Apple silicon Macs in the future, the way in which the issue has been delegated to two standoffish responses on a support thread appears to have caused outrage, with the thread brimming with irate replies and claims that users are planning to move to rival services.

Google Drive was recently updated with native support for Apple silicon, and other services such as Microsoft OneDrive and Box are already testing native Apple silicon support.

Article Link: Dropbox Seemingly Has No Plans to Natively Support Apple Silicon Macs

Thank you to MacRumors for posting this! Take a look at Dropbox, the votes and comments have blown up.

 

[metkat]

How did you find this out?

Also, what's wrong with iCloud Drive?

I noticed that when I was having DNS issues, opening all local video files gained a few second pause. I did some packet sniffing, and eventually figured out those few seconds were the timeout for a Dropbox process trying to call home. Wasn't happening when the computer didn't think it was connected to the internet, only when it did and DNS queries were failing.

I've been using iCloud for most of my syncing needs, and hidden directories on my own web servers when I need to send a larger file to someone. That last has been a hassle, apparently I need to look into iCloud Drive.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

Dropbox also seems to have zero plans in being competitive in any other way these days. Their UI is a mess (on every plattform)...
The pricing isn't anywhere near competitive either... Got a sales call from them once... asked what it can do better than our existing Office365 subscription. There wasn't really much to talk about... Well... nothing was sold that day.

DropBox imho has outlived itself... Too little innovation. They have zero USP... What they could have done: obviously true end2end encryption (shame), local synchronisation (p2p when multiple people sit in the same office), LUN support (network mounted drives),... lots of wasted opportunities... at least for a company that specializes in storage...

 

[MNGR]

Definitely a thing. Last December moved to what I think is the last rev of MacBook Pro 16 inch (Intel) with all the options. Before that was daily driving a Razer Blade Pro 2017 model with HS, the OS of which was running out of security patches. The M1 processor looked nice, the storage options did not.
The M1 Pro and Max MacBook Pro models now have the 8TB storage and 64 GB RAM option, so if I could have waited another year that is what I would be getting now.
Since I am a big fan of 1Password (version 7 rather than 8) and like to keep stuff local with options for cloud sync, the use of Dropbox for these years with 1Password has been my "cloud/offsite" storage of bare bones backup in case of total catastrophic loss. I use 1Password like a "file cabinet" and let Dropbox sync it to Mac and Windows.
If Dropbox does not support M1 this year is fine with me. In next 18 months when I am likely ready to make the move to M2 Max (hopefully with 128 GB RAM and 16 TB storage) there will be support from Dropbox for that architecture. If not, then will migrate from 1Password to another local based storage option and find another local/cloud based sync option that is not Apple or Alphabet based.

Don’t forget that 1P will no longer support local vaults as of the next version. So byebye 1Password and Dropbox

 

[sonamo]

So where is this fabled OneDrive for Apple Silicon they mentioned? I have never seen it anywhere outside of this article.

As for Dropbox, can't believe the lack of communication about Apple Silicon from them. I pay them all this money every year, and they are completely quiet about it. There are third party Dropbox apps from much smaller dev teams that offer a native app, but they can't even pull together a beta? Very disappointed.

 

[nebojsak]

Yeah something about the story just didn't make any sense. Unlike many in this thread who seem to hate Dropbox - aside from a few syncing issues as of late, it still my essential service next to Evernote.

From what I've seen in this thread, majority of them have no clue what is Dropbox and what it does.

 

[4jasontv]

Even if they hadn’t considered doing Apple Silicon until today, and they want to test it before releasing it to the public, I’m a little confused why it would take more than a quarter to update.

 

[topmacat]

who care ?! moved out of public cloud (except iCloud) looong time ago .....using self set up could storage , nextcloud is the best and combination of syncthing i can do much much more !

 

[boss.king]

This is getting very spammy.

How is it spammy? I'm recommending software I think is good that's directly related to the topic of the article. I'm not affiliated with the dev or team or whatever. Is it the link that you think is spam or do you just not like seeing people recommend software?

 

[nikhsub1]

I switched to the Maestral Dropbox client which runs natively on Silicon, and it’s been great: https://maestral.app/

I just installed this - seems to be good so far. While I would love to kick dropbox to the curb, it will take me a lot of work to do this that I really don't want to do right now so this solution will do for now. Dropbox is really starting to emulate logmein with all their ********.

 

[polyphenol]

I went TO Dropbox after the mess Google made out of Drive on the Mac. SMB mounts from localhost? Come on, can they be any more clueless? OneDrive isn't even a consideration so there's really no other choice unless you want to stand something up on your own.

I'm planning on checking out Maestral, I just haven't had the time.

I have few problems with Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud Drive (save anonymity on iCloud Drive file shares). But I have had quite a lot with Dropbox.

Mind, my needs these days are fairly simple. I want multiple cloud drives to try to make it easy for others to download the documents I share - regardless the platform they use.

I keep finding some individual users, despite seeming to be on the same platform as others, and seeming to go through the same steps, hit a problem. From my point of view, offering multiple locations is the simplest way of overcoming such problems.

There are so many possible reasons for a problem, I simply cannot provide adequate support to all the potential users. A pragmatic approach is essential.

 

[zorinlynx]

Yeah something about the story just didn't make any sense. Unlike many in this thread who seem to hate Dropbox - aside from a few syncing issues as of late, it still my essential service next to Evernote.

So yeah I won't be giving these guys up anytime soon. In the meantime you guys have fun spamming these other apps in the thread like we don't know that you're shills for the company or possibly work there.

Sounds like the higher ups didn't know what was going on and set things straight. Hopefully they retrain their support staff because this was extremely embarrassing to the company.

Making users vote for something they have to do anyway to continue supporting the platform? That's certainly a first in my experience dealing with software companies!

 

[FCX]

We've got OneDrive, which is fine for our use-case. I don't have a Dropbox account, but do sometimes get links to shared folders from subcontractors - had a designer share a folder full of images & video clips, could only download them one at a time (there were hundreds). My clicky finger is still sore!

 

[alex2792]

The Intel version seems to run just fine, not sure that anyone will see the difference since it doesn’t exactly require a supercomputer to sync files.

 

[justperry]

It seems like the Dropbox CEO just tweeted that they will release a native client early next year:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1453762478479843332

Maybe a good thing to add to this article?

Seriously...I think he's a liar, they had plenty of time to update and support Apple silicon, they still need half a year or even more (1H 2022)...for such a big company.

Fishy, just saying.