Somewhat disappointed with Airdrop

[SolRayz]

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I really expected this would be a welcome replacement for Dropcopy, but as it stands now, I'm not so sure. The fact that one must have the airdrop pane within the Finder open on BOTH computers to initialize a transfer seems counter intuitive. With future OS revisions Apple will have to improve this. Or Am I missing something here?

 

[ratzzo]

I agree on the opened windows issue. However this is just a user friendly way of doing it, you could always just connect to the IP address of the computer in question

 

[mrapplegate]

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I really expected this would be a welcome replacement for Dropcopy, but as it stands now, I'm not so sure. The fact that one must have the airdrop pane within the Finder open on BOTH computers to initialize a transfer seems counter intuitive. Hopefully with future OS revisions we will be able to transfer less restrictively. Am I missing something here?

I think it is a privacy feature. You don't show up in other Airdrop equipped macs until both have the finder view open. Along with needing permission to begin a transfer I think it works well.

 

[SolRayz]

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I thought the point of airdrop was the share files across your network. My wife and I both like to dl and drop files quickly to each others comp without restriction. We need to be given security options.

Then we we will drop files onto our Mac Mini media server, but opening up Finder there adds more steps than is necessary.

 

[mrapplegate]

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I thought the point of airdrop was the share files across your network. My wife and I both like to dl and drop files quickly to each others comp without restriction. We need to be given security options.

Then we we will drop files onto our Mac Mini media server, but opening up Finder everytime is kind of lame.

The point of Airdrop is simple. From Apple's site:

"Looking for a fast way to share files with people nearby? With AirDrop, you can send files to anyone around you wirelessly — no Wi-Fi network required. And no complicated setup or special settings. Just click the AirDrop icon in the Finder sidebar, and your Mac automatically discovers other AirDrop users within about 30 feet of you. To share a file, simply drag it to someone’s name. Once accepted, the fully encrypted file transfers directly to that person’s Downloads folder."

There are security options, each transfer is encrypted and a firewall is created.

You can still use dropbox, ~/Public/Drop Box to simply drop files.

 

[SolRayz]

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I do like the no wifi option. But I guess I expected it would be more like Dropcopy where all users on your network are listed and the file you drop is sent to the respective users comp regardless of what he/she is doing.

 

[xraydoc]

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I thought the point of airdrop was the share files across your network. My wife and I both like to dl and drop files quickly to each others comp without restriction. We need to be given security options.

Then we we will drop files onto our Mac Mini media server, but opening up Finder there adds more steps than is necessary.

You can still access other networked computer's OS X ~/Public/Drop Box folder (write-only) as you could in previous versions.

My problem with AirDrop is that it doesn't seem reliable. File transfers of up to around 200MB seemed to work fine, but last night I tried to transfer a 12GB file (a Parallels virtual machine) from my iMac to my MBA via my home 802.11n network. Failed at less than 1/4 of the way through every time. Tried it at least 6 times.

I gave up after that and used old-fashioned AFP-protocol file sharing. Transferred the on the first try.

 

[mrapplegate]

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I do like the no wifi option. But I guess I expected it would be more like Dropcopy where all users on your network are listed and the file you drop is sent to the respective users comp regardless of what he/she is doing.

I edited my response there is still dropbox, like xraydoc said.

 

[mrapplegate]

You can still access other networked computer's OS X ~/Public/Drop Box folder (write-only) as you could in previous versions.

My problem with AirDrop is that it doesn't seem reliable. File transfers of up to around 200MB seemed to work fine, but last night I tried to transfer a 12GB file (a Parallels virtual machine) from my iMac to my MBA via my home 802.11n network. Failed at less than 1/4 of the way through every time. Tried it at least 6 times.

I gave up after that and used old-fashioned AFP-protocol file sharing. Transferred the on the first try.

I never tried to send anything over 300MB, I'm sure 12GB would fail for me as well with my luck. I would stick with a wired solution for larger files.