Comment by riobard
10 years ago
At this point you need to follow up with convincing technical details of why Dropbox needs the circumvention to counter the accusation and rebuild the damaged trust.
The reason for needing Accessibility API listed in your response is pretty vague, especially for those Mac users not having Microsoft products tainting their systems.
I've deleted Dropbox from my Mac for now. I'm not installing it back till there's reasonable explanation and remedies.
> why Dropbox needs the circumvention
I'm not affiliated with Dropbox, but compare the UX of Dropbox (type in your admin-password and that's it) with the one of Steam (opens the System preferences and forces you to make manual changes). Both need to be allowed accessibility access for one feature or another, but only one of them provides convincing UX.
For us power users, the "official" way is better, sure, but what's the percentage of power-users compared to normal users who actually enjoy the office intrgration and other things made possible by the accessibility API?
I would be happiest if it didn't do the dirty thing and also didn't offer office integration. Maybe that's the change they need to make. But if they insist on doing the things that need accessibility, then the current solution is so much more convenient than the steam dance.
Doing it is only part of of it. Doing it behind users back without a message or warning, or a even an article on their website is the biggest problem.
I agree with you general sentiment, but would Word or Excel really "taint" your system?
Morally?
Vs. Apple? That seems thin...
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I can't stand the `~/Documents/"Microsoft User Data"` folder, but that's what I get any time I open an Office app.
Let's be honest about this. Dropbox has always been awful with security. They used to flat out lie about encryption (pretending they encrypted server side, when they weren't at all). They've had numerous other incidents, including ones where Arash treated affected customers horribly.
Dropbox has hired some good people, but the foundation consists of a great CEO, and a customer-hostile CTO who doesn't give a fuck about security. It will NEVER be a good product because of that.
Drew Houston would be WAY wealthier today if he'd fired that worthless piece of shit he calls a CTO years ago.