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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday July 20 2019, @10:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the who's-computer-is-it? dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Dropbox silently installs new file manager app on users' systems [Updated]

Update 4:06pm ET: Dropbox says this was a mistake. "We recently announced a new desktop app experience that is now currently available in Early Access. Due to an error, some users were accidentally exposed to the new app for a short period of time. The issue has been resolved, though there might be a short lag for some users to see resolution. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused."

Original Post: Hey Dropbox users, how has Dropbox been for you lately? Major changes are coming to the Dropbox desktop app. The company announced its "New Desktop Experience" in June, and previously it was opt-in. Recently, though, a number of users on Twitter and at the Ars Orbiting HQ have reported silently being "upgraded" to this radically different version of Dropbox.

This new version of Dropbox wants to be... a file manager? Instead of the minimal sync app, the Dropbox icon now opens a big, multi-panel, blue and white window showing all your Dropbox files. It kind of looks like Slack, if Slack was a file manager. You can now "star" folders as important so they show up in the left panel (again, like a Slack chat room). The middle panel shows your Dropbox files, and the right panel shows a file preview with options for comments and sharing. You can search for files, sort by name or date, and do all the usual file operations like cut, copy, and paste. It's a file manager.

A big part of the appeal of Dropbox is (was?) that it's a dead-simple product: it's a folder, in the cloud! Put your stuff in the folder, and it seamlessly gets backed up and synced to all your other computers. Part of using Dropbox means installing the sync app to your computer, and to keep everything fresh and up to date, Dropbox has the ability to silently update this app from time to time. Using this mechanism to silently install a bigger, more bloated, completely different version of the Dropbox app onto people's computers seems... wrong, especially with no notice whatsoever. Updates are one thing, but manyusers (your author included) feel like there was a lack of consent here.

Dropbox's direction and attitude have been clear for a while now:

They don't see this as MY computer.

It's THEIR computer, and they're doing whatever they need to boost whatever initiative or growth targets they're trying to maximize this month.

I'm just along for the ride.

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) July 17, 2019


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:24AM (4 children)

    by Booga1 (6333) on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:24AM (#869347)

    It has been "the way things are" for a while now. No longer is a piece of software or service ever complete. It must be updated! There must be new versions with a "new user experience!"

    The saddest part is that users seem to be utterly clueless about it because they're just so used to it. I've seen users complain that an app was "out of date" or "abandoned" because there hasn't been a new release in over a year.
    It seems the users never contemplated that the developer might have decided that the software was done and finalized. It does what they set out to do and it works...how terrible that must be.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:43AM (#869350)

    Just need to throw out a new point release every few months and just say "Minor bug fixes" or "Small performance improvement" but not actually change anything.

  • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:49PM

    by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:49PM (#869358) Journal

    It’s all part of the business model for those who have an interest in getting you to spend more time online. Everyone in the associated industries benefits from this. End users do not unless the “upgrade” includes new and desireable features, which is rare.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:22PM (1 child)

    by digitalaudiorock (688) on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:22PM (#869394) Journal

    The saddest part is that users seem to be utterly clueless about it because they're just so used to it. I've seen users complain that an app was "out of date" or "abandoned" because there hasn't been a new release in over a year.

    +1000. Don't even get me started on this trend, and I see it more and more with Linux applications as well. Classic example...I was using the Vuse bit-torrent client and got sick of how bloated it was, and started looking for, ideally, a lightweight command line replacement. I can't tell you how many places I read not to use rtorrent because it "hasn't been updated in"...blah blah blah. Luckily I ignored that, and it's just about exactly what I was looking for and just plain works. Another example is gtk+2. I keep hearing how that's "not maintained" but I tend to suspect that it just "works". I've avoided gtk+3 so far along with most everything from the freedesktop.org direction. They're some of the kings of this "it can't possibly be any good if the pot's not constantly being stirred" philosophy. I won't even get into the cluster fuck that is Mozilla.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by digitalaudiorock on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:34PM

      by digitalaudiorock (688) on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:34PM (#869424) Journal

      To expand on that a bit, that trend is especially wrong in the case of applications that have a very targeted purpose, and generally just don't need new features...and as to the original topic, dropbox should be exactly that. I've never had a dropbox account and never will. Let's not forget the audacity of their encryption claims way back...one's that anyone with any understanding of encryption knew were impossible:

      https://www.wired.com/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/ [wired.com]