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by sk11001 595 days ago
Steve Jobs was right - Dropbox is a feature, not a product.
4 comments

A feature of what? Surely Jobs didn't expect a feature of Windows, OSX, Android, Linux, and ChromeOS to all seamlessly interact with one another.

I don't doubt that Jobs might have seen Dropbox as a feature that Apple could have implemented across the Apple ecosystem, but that's a pretty limited view of where the value of Dropbox lies.

Why is iCloud different? For the Apple ecosystem, interaction with Mac/iPhone/AppleTV is all that matters. Which is why I don't subscribe to the garden. But it's a reasonable perspective of Jobs that doesn't conflict with this statement.
But it's a reasonable perspective of Jobs that doesn't conflict with this statement.

That's what I'm saying. From Jobs' perspective it was a feature for Apple, because Jobs believed only Apple devices matter. For everyone else that's a pretty limited view of the world that doesn't really apply, and measuring Dropbox (as a company) by that standard is nonsensical. It should be obvious that there's value in sharing files more widely than just within one ecosystem.

It's a product that I was willing to pay for (until I required native E2E encryption). _iCloud Drive_ is a feature, mostly — aside from the fact that you still have to pay for it to be useful, so kind of still a product.

Steve Jobs was wrong about many things, and this was one of them.

People bring up the old naysaying comment about DropBox from some HN user years ago like it was a bad comment.

Maybe people like bad products, and make bad products rich all the time?

You can make a good product and go out of business, sometimes through actually no fault of your own too.

I agree, Dropbox is a feature - and it shouldn't be a product.

It's been a product for 17 years.
Not when your competition are consumer companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple.

I'm on Google One at $100 per year, getting more services than Dropbox can offer with their $120 plan.

Maybe they have a future in enterprise sales, but they are outcompeted even by Zoho in consumer space

I'm responding to the person who quoted Steve Jobs by saying Dropbox isn't a product, it's a feature. 17 years is a really long time on the web, and Dropbox has not only been a product, but a successful publicly traded company for most of that time, during which so many other "real" products have risen and fallen. The fact that you subscribe to Google One doesn't tell me anything, except that Google created a product to compete with Dropbox, which is also a product.
A product thats getting its lunch eaten by products that have dropbox as a feature