Comments on: Dropbox

By: Michael Tsai - Blog - An Ode to DiskWarrior, SuperDuper, and Dropbox

Michael Tsai - Blog - An Ode to DiskWarrior, SuperDuper, and Dropbox — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:21:25 +0000

[...] mode, where it didn’t load its code into the Finder. And I think that the company has been irresponsible with their users’ resource forks and metadata (and also with disclosing which parts of the [...]

By: Jan Eden

Jan Eden — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:01:16 +0000

I recently dived into the whole HFS/metadata complex and found that sparsebundles will be handled correctly in Snow Leopard, regardless of the bundle bit in com.apple.FinderInfo, as long as they carry the .sparsebundle extension. You can easily fix "corrupted" bundles by adding this extension.

I sync'ed an encrypted sparsebundle with DropBox for several months now, and I had to restore it via the web interface once during that period. The zipped copy obtained from DropBox worked just fine.

By: bon

bon — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:18:26 +0000

Incidentally, SugarSync has the same problem with packages and resource forks. But they don't tell you that up front. It's buried somewhere in a forum. I lost an entire iPhoto library. 20 gigs gone because I was trying to keep my photo library safe by backing it up.

By: bon

bon — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:15:50 +0000

JungleDisk supports MAc OS X packages and resource forks NOW. And it syncs between multiple machines, Mac, Linux, and Windows. And you pay for only what you store. And it uses Rackspace Cloud or S3 for storage, both bulletproof industry leaders.

And it's supported Mac since Day 1. Mac users aren't second-class citizens.

By: Michael Tsai

Michael Tsai — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:32:28 +0000

arash: Why do you require a login at all to read the forum?

By: arash

arash — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:38:26 +0000

hi b,
we're not hiding anything :-). the forum login is integrated with dropbox logins so that users don't have to go through a registration process to post. it'd be a bit of work to support guest logins, but it's on the TODO list.

By: B Clenderson

B Clenderson — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:14:21 +0000

Having to create a login to simply _read_ the contents of dropboxes' support and bug forums is not good. That needs fixing. It indeed makes IT folks wonder if they are hiding something, even if that is not dropboxes' intent to hide something.

By: anya

anya — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:05:17 +0000

Hey, I have a problem,
Everytime I drop something in my drop box it shows as offline on the other systems... but seems to be fine on mine! the original system is an emac and the one where i tried to open the files are a mac g5 tower!

Help

By: arash

arash — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:23:05 +0000

thanks for the suggestions, michael -- we'll be working on making this information more accessible (starting this week) and more importantly, solving the core problem :).

By: Michael Tsai

Michael Tsai — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:39:08 +0000

Arash: First, I appreciate your responding in detail here. For the resource forks and xattrs, I understand and agree that it’s not an easy problem to solve. For packages, it seems to me that since Mac OS X can tell you which folders are packages, you should have the information that you need to support all package types, rather than a hard-coded list, if they’re uploaded by the Mac client. Of course, as a developer I also know that things are often not as simple as they seem.

I’m not accusing you of having bad intentions, but I think the current presentation of this information is inadequate. I briefly checked out Dropbox when it first became available, because it sounded cool, although I didn’t end up using it because I don’t need this sort of syncing myself. The next time I heard about it was when one of my customers complained that my application was incompatible with it. It had saved a file (using Apple’s sparse bundle package format) that became unopenable after syncing with Dropbox.

I went to your site, but there’s almost no information there unless one has an account. I searched Google, but didn’t find anything. I downloaded and installed Dropbox and did not find the information in the Read Me or the installer. After creating an account, I logged in and saw the FAQ and forums. The FAQ does not list any limitations on the data that can be stored in Dropbox. None of the sticky threads, including the one about known issues, mentioned the problem. I did a search and found the thread where you talked about already adding “first-class treatment of OS X packages.” Then I found a thread where other users reported problems with sparse bundle images. Some time later I found threads mentioning resource forks and xattrs. My conclusion is that no one is going to find this information unless they’re really looking for it. As you note, most users don’t know what these features are—therefore, they won’t even be looking.

The beauty of Dropbox is that it’s so transparent. To the user, it does not look like data is being transferred. There’s no “archive” command, no dragging to a server or disk window, etc. There’s just this magic folder that’s always in sync. This is also the danger because it sets the expectation that everything will “just work.” Mac users have historically not needed to know about resource forks. They’re automatically handled when archiving files, sending them via e-mail, even preserved (as ._ files) when copying to an iDisk or FAT16 volume. Dropbox gives no indication that it’s any different.

Here are some concrete suggestions:

1. Have a list of the known limitations that’s accessible before downloading the software, or at least in a Read Me before installing it.

2. Link to this list from the FAQ.

3. Make the forum accessible without a login and indexable by Google.

4. Information in the forum doesn’t count as being available if finding it requires searching for an obscure technical term or reading through pages of posts.

5. Since most users won’t read this information or know what it means, Dropbox should present a warning message when syncing a file whose data cannot be fully preserved.