You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Dropbox support for macOS 12.3
So I'm referring to https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/macos-12-monterey-support
Does this mean it will be 100% safe to upgrade to macOS 12.3 as long as I keep Smart sync to Loc...
You can never ever say its 100% safe - simply because you'd be using a Beta OS and also a Beta version of Dropbox. However, it should work well, but, be cautious of the fact it is beta at all levels.
I know previously at last minute notice Apple have changed how stuff worked in beta versions meaning stuff which used to work no longer did when updated to the next release so thats also something to be aware of.
What are InDesign creatives doing about this?
What are DropBox software engineers doing about this?
We are downgrading our staff from Monterey to Big Sur to keep them happy and productive.
Dropbox Support do not seem to understand that the Monterey implementation of online only/local file syncing no longer functions the way it used to under Big Sur. They tell me that 'cloud only' (zero file size) linked files in InDesign on macOS Monterey need to first be locally synced to prevent this workflow error message pop-up - but this didn't used to be the case under macOS Big Sur.
I provided DB Support with a screen recording illustrating the problem (see this link: www.dropbox.com/s/5lmtck47lk1cowt/Dropbox%20Big%20Sur%20InDesign.mov?dl=0 showing that this was not required under macOS Big Sur. Other forum posts say that MS OneDrive on macOS Monterey is not generating this linked file error message.
- I say this without bias as I have been a very happy Dropbox customer for many years. It’s shocking to see that this issue has not been solved in such a long time. Dropbox doesn’t seem able to keep up with the pace of the rest of the industry… Apple just released the beta for macOS Ventura and Dropbox is stuck at 12.2…
I just contacted support again to see if they actually passed on my screen recording to the engineers. They said they can see it was passed on. I asked for financial compensation (reduced DB fees) for the period of time that our workflow and productivity and they said they would pass on my request. I reminded them that Apple are about to release macOS Ventura, so there’s no point focusing on getting Dropbox to work with Monterey, there’s a whole generation of macOS that Dropbox has failed to 100% work on. I read they have $8 billion in user fees that they are sitting on. But yet, they don’t have the software engineering resources to solve this. I actually have a ‘conspiracy theory’ that Dropbox can’t solve this on their own without getting Apple engineers to help them, and Apple engineers want Dropbox to provide their back of house code before Apple will help them, but Dropbox will not want to do this. My theory is that Apple want to see Dropboxes backend ‘best in class’ sync code so they can improve iCloud Drive syncing, which, like OneDrive and probably others, is a slow dog, compared to Dropbox. I personally have used Dropbox since the first year it was released, and know it is the best in class, but this issue (and their awful new choice of wording for online/offline sync status) makes me sad for Dropbox and their loyal customers.
To me this seems the story of the company that fired the most capable (and expensive) developers to save fixed expenses and now they've discovered that some real work cannot be done with interns, and they aren't able to find developers capable of doing what needs to be do (you can see they are looking for a lot of seniors developers).
Said that, currently I've removed all Dropbox from my Macs and I'm using it from web only. My main use of Dropbox is maintain about 600 GB of PDF related to literature, technology and science as indexed stuff from DEVONthink. I've moved all of that into internal DEVONthink databases. The only handicap is I need a Mac to do fast queries (I used Dropbox internal search for that from Windows when I was in Windows).
If they solve this problem before my current year payment ends, I will go back. If not, well, goodbye forever, Dropbox. And the solution to this is use my Synology NAS as a cloud provider. WebDAV could be enough to me.
