[presumeaway]

> a feature, not a productive

That line was so incisive when I first heard it in 2011 that it's stuck with me ever since:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbo...

Edit: Hey guys, it's the only primary source I could find citing Drew Houston's conversation with Steve Jobs, wherein Steve Jobs stated that Dropbox was a feature, and not a product.

[gohrt]

> [Drew Houston] reverse-engineered Apple’s file system so that his startup’s logo, an unfolding box, appeared elegantly tucked inside. Not even an Apple SWAT team had been able to do that.

With "Not Even Wrong" incoherent nonsense like that, Forbes doesn't belong on HN.

[fjarlq]

A hint of explanation of the reverse-engineering:

https://www.quora.com/Many-articles-about-Drew-Houston-say-t...

Update: I haven't found video or slides about Rian Hunter's explanation, but I did find this note about his CUSEC 2012 talk:

At the Dropbox talk, Rian Hunter explained how Dropbox was able to integrate into the Mac OS X finder and the hoops that they had to jump through to implement this feature. The technical aspects of the talk were centered on how the engineers used very low level C code to trick the operating system into thinking that the Dropbox client was a part of the finder when it actually was not. An unexpected but enjoyable surprise was the presence of an Apple engineer who worked on the OS X operating system. It was almost if trying to break the software was a game of cat and mouse between Apple and Dropbox, but in the end, both Rian and the engineer created an extremely informative and enjoyable discussion.

-- http://iwarrior.uwaterloo.ca/2012/02/01/13721/softies-invade...

[presumeaway]

Sure, but it was the only primary source I could find for Drew Houston recounting his conversation with Steve Jobs. Most all the other coverage at the time was blogspam.