Dropbox syncs files between computers, but who wants that? The New Dropbox, announced this week, has all sorts of wonderful features to organize your cloud content, package your designs, integrate with slack, and to eat half a gig of RAM just by running on your computer.
John Gruber writes that it sucks.
All I want from Dropbox is a folder that syncs perfectly across my devices and allows sharing with friends and colleagues. That's it: a folder that syncs with sharing. And that's what Dropbox was.
Now it's a monstrosity that embeds its own incredibly resource-heavy web browser engine. In a sense Steve Jobs was right — the old Dropbox was a feature not a product. But it was a feature well-worth paying for, and which made millions of people very happy.
At Hacker News, former Dropbox employee Taylor Schwimmer puts it bluntly:
Many people only use Dropbox as a backup and file share product. That's great. However, it's a terrible business, especially for Dropbox
It's always interesting to go from using a simple, single-purpose tool to being locked inside a toolshed full of rickety contraptions. You wonder what happened, then notice all the enterprise customers manacled to the walls.
