Dropbox’s Finder Toolbar
Seth Vargo (via Hacker News):
You would think less than a month after a very popular HackerNews article on how Dropbox Hacks Your Mac, the file sharing company would be careful about the activities they are performing in their software distribution. Nope, not Dropbox. Today they released an update that adds a hacky overlay UI element to finder that cannot be disabled!
[…]
Aside from the fact that this banner looks like something free software would install as a toolbar, it has some serious UX issues. I question if Dropbox actually tested this thing.
Hi folks, Ben from Dropbox on the desktop client team --
This is an experiment that is being tested with a fraction of users primarily on beta releases (which Seth is on, as evidenced by the version number in his screenshots). We haven’t shipped it to everyone so that we can continue to iterate and incorporate feedback. I checked with the team about the “Finder Toolbar” drop down and it looks like it requires a restart of the Dropbox client in order to take affect — let us know if that doesn’t work.
Vargo said that didn’t work. (And does “primarily” mean some non-beta users?)
Dropbox still refuses to answer why their client takes up a ton of CPU anytime there is IO on the system. It seems like they are monitoring ALL filesystem activity, not just the Dropbox folder. What they are doing with that data I have no idea.
I have to quit Dropbox before expanding a new Xcode archive because otherwise it overwhelms the CPU monitoring all the new files, which are not in my Dropbox folder.
I just want a folder that syncs, with as little system hacking as possible.
Previously: Dropbox Modifies TCC.db to Give Itself Accessibility Access, Disabling Dropbox’s Haxie.
Update (2016-10-05): Marco Arment:
What the hell is going on at @Dropbox these days? The Mac client developers have lost all respect for the platform.
6 Comments RSS · Twitter
[…] peuvent évoluer d’ici une éventuelle mise en service chez tout le monde. C’est ce qu’a expliqué un membre de Dropbox dans un forum. Cette barre n’est proposée qu’à une fraction des […]
> I just want a folder that syncs, with as little system hacking as possible.
I've had good success with SyncThing: https://syncthing.net
Resilio Sync (previously BitTorrent Sync) works nicely, with an addition of being able to have several folders that sync. I only have dropbox installed on my linux server for compatibility with some iOS apps and it's also synced with a Resilio sync folder to some of my devices.
[…] von meinem Mac geworfen; die iOS-App blieb installiert, weil sie mir nicht ins Betriebssystem pfuscht. Dateien, die noch auf Dropbox liegen, lassen sich für mich am Mac über den Browser schieben oder […]
