Linked List: June 13, 2019

Thursday, 13 June 2019

Dropbox:

Today, we’re unveiling the new Dropbox. It’s the Dropbox you know and love, but better. It’s a single workspace to organize your content, connect your tools, and bring everyone together, wherever you are. The first thing you’ll notice is an all-new Dropbox desktop app that we’re introducing today through our early access program. It’s more than an app, though — it’s a completely new experience.

I don’t want any of this. All I want from Dropbox is a folder that syncs perfectly across my devices and allows sharing with friends and colleagues. That’s it: a folder that syncs with sharing. And that’s what Dropbox was.

Now it’s a monstrosity that embeds its own incredibly resource-heavy web browser engine. In a sense Steve Jobs was right — the old Dropbox was a feature not a product. But it was a feature well-worth paying for, and which made millions of people very happy.

If iCloud Drive folder sharing works as well as promised when it ships this fall, I’ll probably ditch Dropbox completely. There’s simply no clarity to this new Dropbox. I don’t even understand much of what Dropbox is saying it can do. I think they’re trying to be Slack or something? I already have Slack. All I want is a folder that syncs, with sharing.

See Also: Michael Tsai’s roundup of links.

Federico Viticci: ‘Initial Thoughts on iPadOS’ ★

Federico Viticci:

For now though, after using the iPadOS beta on my 12.9” iPad Pro for a few days, I’d like to share some initial considerations on iPadOS and what it means for the future of the platform.

Good overview of everything new in iPadOS 13. I think “desktop-class browsing” in Safari is going to be a game-changer for many people. It really is like browsing on Safari with a Mac.

I still don’t get the multitasking metaphor on iPadOS, though. I can get an app into split view easily enough, but it seems devilishly tricky to get an app out of split view. The main multitasking interface/concept on iPadOS is a lot like Spaces on the Mac. You’re not switching between apps so much as you are between spaces, and a particular app might have instances in several spaces. But ⌘-Tab switching with a keyboard makes a hash of that. You can only get to the most recently used space for an app via ⌘-Tab. I think there should be one unified switching interface on iPadOS.

I’m so glad to see contextual menus as standard UI elements in iPadOS. But I find it annoying that they’re triggered by a long tap — I simply hate the delay. It feels to me like Apple has tightened this up in iPadOS 13 — there’s either less of a delay, or they’ve somehow made it feel like less of a delay. Either way it’s a win.