Dropbox Shutting Down Mailbox and Carousel in Early 2016

[pdaholic]

Dropbox pretty much runs my world - home and work.

Should I start looking for an alternative?

OneDrive or Box ?

You want to jump ship because some members of an internet forum are making gloom and doom posts about the future of Dropbox? I see you haven't been a member here long, you'll eventually get used to the pessimism on this site.

Dropbox also "runs my world" and there's no better alternative (for me) out there. I'll worry when there's actually something to worry about.

 

[0970373]

That's terrible news. I've been using Mailbox as my main client for all my devices including my Mac, iPad and iPhone. Over time I completely ditched Apple's Mail.app assuming that Mailbox would be a reliable, sustainable mail client for all my devices. Now they're shutting down the sevice? That's a big dissappoint to me. Right now I can only come up with Microsoft's Outlook app as an alternative, though it lacks a standalone Mac app. Any better suggestions?

Boxer Pro for iOS. Airmail 2 for your Mac.

 

[nolankvn]

I think Dropbox's plan was to integrate everything into an ecosystem people would buy into (ultimately paying for Dropbox). But unfortunately I bet they're finding that competing with Microsoft, Google, and Apple is pretty tough on the basis of ecosystem. And again, Dropbox has the worst pricing scheme of all of them, so that doesn't help.

Guess they're still figuring out what that ecosystem is going to look like.

I don't really see how they can grow their business anymore. They've abandoned two projects and expect people to have confidence in their upcoming Google Docs competitor? That's laughable.

I will keep using Dropbox because it's the best service (albeit not the best value), but I don't have any long term hopes for them beyond getting bought out at this point.

 

[jcw5002]

I saw this coming a few days and and switch to using Outlook on iOS based on the recommendation from a recent Relay.fm Upgrade episode where Jason talks to Merlin. Man, outlook is GOOD on iOS! Much better than Mailbox.

 

[gmanist1000]

Glad I switched from Mailbox to Spark a while back.

 

[Max(IT)]

Is it a sign they are going bad about the core activity Dropbox ?

 

[prouss]

I saw this coming a few days and and switch to using Outlook on iOS based on the recommendation from a recent Relay.fm Upgrade episode where Jason talks to Merlin. Man, outlook is GOOD on iOS! Much better than Mailbox.

Agree Outlook is the best alternative if you want to use the iPhone for anything approaching work email (still going to miss Mailbox though). What's missing from some of the alternatives being floated here such as Spark (can't say for Inbox) is integration with Cloud services like DB or OneDrive (Outlook offers both and more)- Spark looks cute but seems to allow you to attach photos only, I didn't see a way to attach files (or links at least) - please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re DB in general - not going away any time soon IMHO - they're prepping for an IPO with a business model based on enterprise services and I guess free consumer email and photo management didn't fit into that scenario.

 

[tevion5]

Thanks for being cheeky but I don't want to pay $5/mo just to enable push with mail.app.

You're most welcome.

 

[aloshka]

You want to jump ship because some members of an internet forum are making gloom and doom posts about the future of Dropbox? I see you haven't been a member here long, you'll eventually get used to the pessimism on this site.

Dropbox also "runs my world" and there's no better alternative (for me) out there. I'll worry when there's actually something to worry about.

Dropbox isn't going away anytime soon if ever. Caraousel and Mail were weird to begin with as they had nothing to do with dropboxes. Can't say I'm too surprised that dropbox which has no expertise in mail or photo software would drop them.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Well life is short.

 

[TechZeke]

You want to jump ship because some members of an internet forum are making gloom and doom posts about the future of Dropbox? I see you haven't been a member here long, you'll eventually get used to the pessimism on this site.

Dropbox also "runs my world" and there's no better alternative (for me) out there. I'll worry when there's actually something to worry about.

I love dropbox, so I'm not sure what all the hate is about but that's Macrumors for you.

The syncing between devices is absolutely superb. It automatically syncs on PCs and Macs, plus I can access my files from any computer web browser via the website. Being able to work on the file directly from the folder and have it automatically save when I hit save works flawlessly. I don't think what dropbox does can be done much better. I certainly don't plan on leaving anytime soon.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Yes Dropbox is in trouble. They haven't been able to move beyond their core competency which as Jobs said is a "feature" not a product.

Box is better for SMB/Enterprise with a more complete set of API. I want to see Dropbox find success but they haven't done anything in the last few years that has added significant value.

It's good to see them purging the crap they don't need. Both them and Evernote seem to have fallen victim to reading too much of their press clippings of praise and lost a bit of focus.

 

[ignatius345]

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprized at how well Outlook works on my iPhone too. Started to use it months back, and it hasn't ticked me off enough to stop using it, so that's good.

I've hit a couple snags, but holy crap is their support great -- it's an in-app chat and the people who've gotten back to me have been very helpful and prompt. I really can't believe I'm writing this about Microsoft! Once they get a couple more long-swipe options in there, it'll be pretty close to what Mailbox is (was).

 

[ignatius345]

I love dropbox, so I'm not sure what all the hate is about but that's Macrumors for you.

The syncing between devices is absolutely superb. It automatically syncs on PCs and Macs, plus I can access my files from any computer web browser via the website. Being able to work on the file directly from the folder and have it automatically save when I hit save works flawlessly. I don't think what dropbox does can be done much better. I certainly don't plan on leaving anytime soon.

Ditto. I use it every day across multiple Macs, my work PC and my phone. Been using it for years and have been incredibly pleased. With very few exceptions it "just works", and even syncs things like Finder labels. Try that with Google Drive.

 

[stevemiller]

This really sucks. I use the Mailbox app daily. I'll really miss how easily i could clean up my inbox its a wonderful app

What a mess. I tried to use the mailbox desktop app for months and it just kept getting more and more broken. I abandoned it a while back so it looks like I made the right choice.

For what it's worth I don't think the philosophy behind it is what was making it fail. They simply appeared to be really really terrible at programming.

 

[hemanwomanhater]

Boxer Pro for iOS. Airmail 2 for your Mac.

I liked Boxer but when I used it earlier this year they still hadn't integrated Push (just Fetch), which was kind of a dealbreaker. I see that they've added this now so I might give it another try.

 

[Michael Goff]

Why do you think this?

I personally believe that within 10 years time we won't have a company that just does cloud storage.

 

[0970373]

I liked Boxer but when I used it earlier this year they still hadn't integrated Push (just Fetch), which was kind of a dealbreaker. I see that they've added this now so I might give it another try.

It's much improved from before. The push works really well and you can choose which accounts to turn notifications on/off/. It'a really nice feature.

I loved Acompli but MS messed with too much and rebranded as Outlook and it isn't as good as it used to be but still a nice app.

 

[aajeevlin]

Wasn't this the app that had a countdown in it? The queue system?

YEP! That's the one.

 

[C DM]

I don't really see how they can grow their business anymore. They've abandoned two projects and expect people to have confidence in their upcoming Google Docs competitor? That's laughable.

I will keep using Dropbox because it's the best service (albeit not the best value), but I don't have any long term hopes for them beyond getting bought out at this point.

Plenty of companies drop all kinds of projects at different times, that on its own doesn't really mean much one way or another.

 

[CAO 303]

Man, I really dug Carousel's UI for photo storage. The timeline feature? Stellar. Amazon's photo storage/organization system is pretty good too, but Carousel was always my go-to. Flickr: meh. All three beat the tar out of iCloud photo storage though.

It looks like Mailbox will be missed by many more than Carousel will, but Carousel did have its fans. Are there any suggested replacement alternatives from the hivemind?

 

[0970373]

You want to jump ship because some members of an internet forum are making gloom and doom posts about the future of Dropbox? I see you haven't been a member here long, you'll eventually get used to the pessimism on this site.

Dropbox also "runs my world" and there's no better alternative (for me) out there. I'll worry when there's actually something to worry about.

I use multiple services depending on needs but Dropbox is my main cloud storage for sure. I don't think DB is going away any time soon but hopefully refocus back on what they are really good at. And maybe finally seriously consider other pricing tiers. In the past they've said that there wasn't enough customer interest in it. I call BS on that. I think they thought they could force the 1TB bucket on ppl with the email & photos thing.

 

[keifer.street]

That sentence could make a chapter in an MBA-level textbook. A lot of CEOs don't get the difference when it applies to their own features.

Dropbox is still a cloud syncing service, right? Yeah it's not a product - it's a service... I'm not sure it's fair to say that it is a feature - that'd be like saying OneDrive is a feature, not a product.

 

[macgeek88]

Mailbox was great in its day.

I recently went through the big contenders in the iPhone/iPad email apps for Gmail. I tried CloudMagic, Outlook, Spark, Boxer, etc. The biggest thing for me is the quickness of push.

Outlook and Spark wouldn't push fast at all.

CloudMagic and Boxer were then the choices. Boxer came in a couple seconds faster so I bought Boxer Pro and it works with my iPad too so I'm using Boxer but CloudMagic is a fantastic choice.

My recommendation for a replacement is CloudMagic or Boxer. I was underwhelmed by Spark and Outlook. I think the contacts/calendar/online storage part of Boxer is better than CloudMagic too, not just the super quick push.

 

[hemanwomanhater]

Plenty of companies drop all kinds of projects at different times, that on its own doesn't really mean much one way or another.

You're definitely right but Dropbox is lacking a true definitive product right now, is what has people concerned for them. The larger companies who routinely buy and drop products have more diversified revenue streams than Dropbox.

Most people seem to agree that Dropbox still provides the best cloud service, which might be true, but I myself have already moved over to iCloud because it has the integrations I want/need and costs $0.99 for more than enough space.

What happens to Dropbox when Google's, Apple's and Microsoft's services catch up, in more people's minds?