What a disaster. The entire initial premise of Dropbox was to sync files reliably. Then I can use real, native apps to edit them. The new Dropbox approach on the other hand inherently requires everything to be in the cloud--I already hate that, but even if I didn't, others already do this and do it better.
I feel like Microsoft actually has the balance right. OneDrive still behaves just like a normal sync client. But to do certain kinds of real-time collaboration you can just point native, desktop Office apps to the cloud version of the file. But when you're offline you still have the same kinds of access you need.
The problem is, files are dying. 99% of the documents shared with me nowadays exist only in some cloud product. No one sends files anymore, it's all Google Docs links and such.
The only real place where files still live are with developers and designers. And even then, the move is away from locally-hosted content and stuff that only exists on someone else's server. VS Code remoting, Sketch Cloud, etc etc.
Dropbox is just fighting against the tide of the entire Internet. I don't disagree that it's disastrous, but what are they going to do? Their core product is going away. It's like being an oil company nowadays.
I feel like Microsoft actually has the balance right. OneDrive still behaves just like a normal sync client. But to do certain kinds of real-time collaboration you can just point native, desktop Office apps to the cloud version of the file. But when you're offline you still have the same kinds of access you need.
Who ever asked for Dropbox OS?