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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, 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]

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