Well that was tempting fate. macOS requested updated permissions for Onedrive to access an external hard drive and now I have 4,000+ duplicate corrupted files (using the Onedrive client).
Iāve been wondering whether this decision by apple is actually driven to force people to pay their extortionate amount for more hard disk space?
I have a base model mbp hooked up to a crucial 2TB where all my files live. Nothing is on the internal hard drive. There has been no reduction in speed to access and open files. Backup is easy to another external drive.
If I want to use cloud storage I am now forced to store that data on the internal drive. That would mean needing a larger hard disk at a really high cost. 2TB storage from apple cost Ā£600. My Crucial 2TB cost Ā£120.
Iāve now cancelled all my cloud storage subscriptions and am only working from an external disk. The one life saver is that Devonthink has a bonjour sync. So my Devonthink DB is on my external ssd and syncs from there via bonjour to my iPad.
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Well, Bonjour syncing is just awesome regardless 
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FWIW, I am still able to mirror my Google Drive files to an external drive on my M1 MBA using āGoogle Drive for Desktopā. 2TB (storage only, no mail) is $100/year.
If you are interested you could test this using a free gmail account.
No.
I mean it absolutely makes no sense except through the eyes of an exasperated extreme minority user. Most customers donāt even use dropbox. A smaller subset use dropbox and store sufficient data in Dropbox for this to be a concern. A subset of those users use an external drive. A further subset use an external drive and use it as their Dropbox sync location.
The cost of implementing this change to the code of the OS vastly outweighs the value of the 25-and-a-half internal storage upgrades sold because of it.
Lets have a little more rational thinking and a little less half-baked conspiracy.
Apple are not changing macOS or iOS to force upgrades to devices at the time of purchase. It never stands up to scrutiny. I get when changes feel obnoxious or unnecessary but most changes arenāt made with you in mind. Thatās the collective āyouā that refers to any one of us as individuals.
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Wow! Thatās an impressive amount of detail. Do you have a source inside Dropbox?
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My original reason for using DropBox was that many apps used to require it for syncing between devices.
Do yāall think that reason has gone away somewhat?
I might well move over to iCloud Syncing if I thought it had.
(My most obvious case is Keyboard Maestro.)
No, I have critical thinking skills.
You have sarcasm.
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Dropbox is still widely used and is still growing in registered users.
My original reason for using DropBox was that many apps used to require it for syncing between devices.
Do yāall think that reason has gone away somewhat?
This would depend on the specific applications, not a general reason for Dropbox use. However, itās still a valid option. For example, you can still use a Dropbox account for syncing DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go.
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And yet there are 700 million Dropbox users and the numbers are increasing not decreasing. (Dropbox Usage and Revenue Stats (2023)).
Iām sorry Apple are the biggest lobbyist against allowing people the right to repair (Lobbyist working for Apple & others managed to rewrite repair law) as well as having closed the door to anyone changing their hard disk or increasing their ram, which does force people to upgrade.
This will affect many who use multiple platforms. If data cannot be stored on an external hard disk, those who need to use Dropbox may find they do need to upgrade their hardware.
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Or theyāll need to use selective sync to curate the data they need on their Mac.
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True, but this makes backup of data a lot more complicated.
My understanding is that Dropbox ābackupā service will backup an external drive. I donāt use it, as I use Dropbox ābackupā (in addition to their āsyncā service) for on-computer files only. Their backup service with external drives surely discussed on their web site somewhere.
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There are 700 million dropbox accounts. Not even remotely the same thing as active users.
(Hell, 3 of these are me and I stopped using Dropbox the very day Condoleezza Rice was promoted to the board)
Itās really difficult to get active users out of dropbox - but you can balance this figure a little with some napkin math. If you took Dropboxās entire annual revenue and assumed it came from the lowest subscription cost - you only arrive at just under 20 million paying customers. The number is much lower than this - as we can assume not all their paying customers are paying for the lowest tier of service. Also not 100% of their annual revenue is likely to be accounted for by these kinds of subscribed customers.
Yes itās true that probably a majority of customerās are using free accounts - but Iād also posit that customers in the situation you describe above are far more likely to be only a subset of paying customers - those with significant data needs.
Apple did lobby against right to repair. Itās irrelevant.
Your argument falls down because it makes no real sense. You have an expensive software change, and if the motivation for that change was to sell a few more hard drive upgrades to a few more users thatās a very minor outcome. That change is in a backlog, and gets prioritised against every change Apple wants to make to macOS. Youāre asking us to believe they prioritised making you buy a bigger hard drive over every other change.
Itās nonsense.
They made this change because it improves the security of virtually every Mac user at the expense of those with large external sync targets. You were the cost, not the motivation.
Your opinion is unconvincing for a number of reasons:
Unless you provide any evidence, this discussion can move on. The last point made me laugh. Apple have lobbied heavily at considerable cost, so for Apple it really isnāt irrelevant. Nor is it for repair shops and users.
Perhaps we need a little less half-baked reasoning and more evidence in the discussion.
Thereās really no need to provide evidence for any of those statements. Theyāre all quite logical. Also they wouldnāt change the outcome of the analysis. My statements are solid because they canāt reasonably be wrong.
We can assume that not all paying dropbox customers pay for the lowest tier of service. This doesnāt need evidence - but Iām sure there is at least one person on this forum paying for a higher tier if you need some evidence (whether or not theyāll read this is another matter). Thereās no reasonable challenge to the validity of this statement at all.
Challenging this is also pretty silly. The whole reason for higher tiers of service is more storage - your own statements suggest that the people most likely to target an external location are those with larger storage needs. Again, the call for evidence here is not reasonable.
Itās entirely irrelevant to the subject at hand. Dropbox syncing, including to external targets, and selecting upgrades at point of purchase have nothing at all to do with right to repair.
Nothing Iāve stated is half baked, itās all quite solid reasoning largely based on the āevidenceā you brought into the discussion without sufficient thought.
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This is a real pain for a lot of people I know. I always used external drives with data that I wanted to sync to Dropbox until last year and totally sympathize with people who are now unable to continue this approach.
I read about this change coming last year and when I got a new laptop and Studio I went for 4TB on both so I can continue using Dropbox, as I need it for my work. This cost an additional ā¬2300 across both machines, and if it werenāt my business paying I would have thought twice about this amount.
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For me as I was paying, I dropped all cloud apps and bought an external ssd. Now all my data is on the external ssd and that moves between my macs. Iāve been really happy with the setup and donāt notice any slowdown in operation. Internal disk space is now only necessary for installed apps.
You can get a backup from Apple, but itās everything including files that have been deleted and you donāt have any control over them.
The format they Provide them in is zip files inside of zip piles with no way to easily restore them. The only advice the support line gave gave was you have to open each individual zip file and extract the files. There could be more than 250 zip files inside of zip files.
Back up files without a way to restore them. Good idea Apple.