Stuff like this is why I like Dropbox even though it's more expensive. File syncing is their bread and butter. It's their main business, not a sideshow. They're always going to do this better than anyone else.
Dropbox works equally well across platforms with near 0 synchronization issues. It's just a folder. They aren't trying to add cloud to their own platform, they don't care what device you use or if you use Apple's word processor or Microsoft or Google Docs.
Dropbox has has a firebase/Parse style API you can use to build applications that store that application data in the cloud.
My favorite Dropbox API uses:
automatic syncing of O'reilly Media books. Whenever O'reilly updates one of their ebooks, I always have the current copy, because O'reilly syncs it with Dropbox.
1Password synching.
automatic Hackpad backups (they had that even before they were bought).
I installed this new app the other day, Trickster from the Mac App store, it automatically detected I was using Dropbox.
But I'll mention some negatives:
Those new recent android apps were really bad and I uninstalled them. Carousel and that other one, I don't even remember what it was now. They were just terrible apps, at least on my Galaxy S4.
I love Dropbox for exactly this reason. I can back up dotfiles, game settings, preferences, my music library... anything anywhere on my disk, as long as I symlink it. It does slow down some operations (since a Dropbox RMI needs to be called whenever one of those files changes) but it's saved me so many times, it's hard to believe.
> Some would think this as a normal use-case for a cloud-drive.
It's more than just that since the Android and IOS 1Password apps can sync from Dropbox without Dropbox being installed on the device. They're synching using the dropbox API in those cases I'd think.
1Password's keychain uses resource forks I think, which makes it inherently not cross-platform (or rather, not cross-filesystem) and could explain the incompatibilities.
Not sure what could be the issue with DMGs, though, since that exact issue is pretty much the reason for their existence.
For me it's 'stays connected' For some reason Google Drive will disconnect periodically and there is no reconnect option. You have to exit and restart, and then it needs to re-index everything.
Multiple Dropboxs. New feature, but I can run my work and home dropbox at the same time and they sync to different folders.
Sharing is cleaner. When I invite a Dropbox user to a share, the share appears in their drive. With Google drive, they get access to the share web only but it doesn't sync to their drive. The UI to get it to sync to drive isn't clear, so I end up doing a lot of 'support'
I also find the Google Drive .gdoc files bizarre. They aren't actual files, users don't understand you can't copy them out of the drive to back them up, etc.
Insync[1] does a good job of solving this, the google docs files are the microsoft equivalent, e.g. spreadsheets sync as excel files (note I'm not affiliated in any way).
I really wish all the Dropbox clients on a LAN would coordinate and not all download the same file from Dropbox.
We had our three work machines all downloading a ~400MB file the other day. No reason Dropbox couldn't figure that out and have one machine download the file and then distribute over LAN.
I tried BTSync and was blown away by how much faster sync in general and especially LAN sync was. I guess Bittorrent Inc. knows how to properly transfer files.
Shame on you for supporting a company that does not respect your privacy, lies to you, and puts a torturing, Constitution-destroying war criminal on their board of directors.
Someone correct my if I'm wrong here, but if you're referring to PRISM, that's not lying. Note that Dropbox as well as any other US company is subject to (distasteful, but otherwise legal) demands for information.
PRISM is basically a secure upload endpoint, not some automated, unaccountable, secret data siphoning tool. (Though they have those as well..)
If I were a popular enough internet company to get frequent NSL requests, it would only make sense to sign up. I have to provide the data, might as well make it as painless as possible.