Apple Vision Pro Support with Dropbox.

[CThreatt]

Support Apple Vision Pro

[Megan]

The Dropbox team is currently reviewing this idea. We will share any updates with you.

[jstdbx]

Hi folks, thanks for all of your thoughtful input and enthusiasm. Allowing customers like you to access your content you trust Dropbox with on the devices you use most is very important to us.

We're actively reviewing your feedback and suggestions and making sure we can deliver a high quality experience here. 

Stay tuned here for more updates. 

[dazzaji]

Hello "jstdbx Dropbox Product Manager" thank you for the update. It’s very helpful to know the team at dropbox remains aware of this.  I hope that you find the courage in your own competence to add support of the Apple Vision Pro to your release roadmap and successfully make sure you can deliver a high quality experience here.  I know engineers at dropbox. You’ve done harder things than this. You can do it.  Find the courage!

[Kcir]

Ummmm... how is this update 

"We're actively reviewing your feedback and suggestions and making sure we can deliver a high quality experience here. "

any different at all from what was said 3 weeks ago?!

"The Dropbox team is currently reviewing this idea."

APV is not something new to developers, you had a half year prior to release to review it and dropbox.   Disappointing.  

[Graham]

Hey everyone, 

Thank you so much for giving so much awesome feedback on this idea. It's one of the most popular so far this year and it's great to see so many comments and votes. 

I haven't had a chance to try Apple Vision Pro yet and I'm super-curious as to what it's capabilities are and whether it would be something I would consider adding to my tech kit. I'd love to hear what all of you think it's best features are, and how they would potentially integrate with Dropbox.

Thanks again for all of your time and effort on this idea, and have a great day! 

Graham

[Kcir]

Graham,

I apologize for not knowing what the role of community manager is, is that related to these forums directly or DropBox Team?  Because the team has already asked how we would use it. And got an excellent reply already from dazzaji a month ago.   My frustration is that there is no apparent actual movement on this for over a month, but a recycling of official comments.  Again, my apologies if I am wrong.  A lot of the frustration is DropBox doesnt actually have to do anything to allow it to be used on the AVP.   It can run any iPad App, unless the vendor specifically opts out.  DB chose not to let us use it.   That is frustrating.   I can accept DB feels a responsibility to do some QA validation on it, okay, but if so, just say so.

I get the sense everyone who hasn't spent the time to actually read up on it think its just another Meta Quest game playing machine. Its not.  It's a productivity device.

What's its greatest productivity feature?  Maximum screen size, maximum portability, minimum footprint.  And privacy.  Only I can see what I am working on with the AVP (unless I screen share).   I should note that I do pair a bluetooth keyboard to it.

So taking your request on face value, literally anything you can do on your computer, you can do with an Apple Vision Pro.  Anything.  Why do I say this?  Because one of the things you can do is use it as a display for your computer.   Why is this good?  Primarily in places where you want to use a large screen, but don't have the space, or you are remote and all you have is your laptop.  Even on an airplane.

It also runs the Microsoft Apps natively so you can read/edit documents.   No other computer needed.  I assume you can see the utility with Dropbox and Microsoft Office Documents?

It's also insanely great for watching movies.   Or pictures.  Which requires files.   Which DropBox stores.  DB routinely begs me for storing my pictures on it.  Why would I do that if I cant access them on my AVP?

There are also lot of non dropbox activities (like there are on my phone, my iPad, which DB does support), but here is the real opportunity for dropbox on the AVP.   Currently there is NO direct wired connection for file transfer.   Everything has to be stored somewhere on the cloud and then downloaded to the AVP if you want to use it offline or remotely.   And that is exactly what I use my Dropbox for, so that all my files are available to me regardless of which computer I am at (I have three I use regularly depending on location), or iPad (two) or phone (admittedly I rarely use my phone for serious file viewing).   I would like to do that with my AVP and dropbox.  But I can't because for whatever reason DB does not want to allow the iPad version of DB on the AVP (which can be done easily).  

So what do I do now to access my files with the AVP (and all my other devices)?  I use iCloud more and more.   Before this I used DB exclusively, because I prefer to focus my cloud experience on one provider.  But slowly but surely out of necessity, I am moving files out of DB into iCloud.  At some point I am going to ask why am I using DB on any of my devices.

5 years ago I used Box.  I moved to DB because I found it more intuitive with my work flow.  But now, DB is interrupting my work flow.   And I note Box IS on the AVP.   But I will likely just continue my exit to iCloud.

The clock is ticking.  An informed reply from the DB team on when this will be implemented will be useful.  And if it's not going to be implemented, then just fess up.

Thanks

[Mike_CF]

Graham,

This is a deeply insulting post to those of us who have been waiting for a simple answer for almost THREE MONTHS now: Is Dropbox going to make the app available for AVP, and if so, when?

Listen to us all: THE AVP IS LIKE AN IPAD.

Whatever you would do on an iPad, you can do on AVP. It has a FILES app, just like the iPad.

It is fully integrated into the Apple ecosystem and iCloud.

We have the Microsoft Office suite of products NATIVE.

As a BUSINESS, we are creating NEW WORKFLOWS with this device in mind. iCloud and BOX.COM work, but DROPBOX does not. We will be finalizing our pipeline very soon, and if Dropbox doesn't show up in the next few days, it's literally going to be removed from our company workflows and replaced with BOX, which ALREADY HAS A NATIVE APP.

I'm NOT asking for a native app here. We're all just asking you to MAKE THE IPAD APP AVAILABLE TO US.

Seriously, click the f***ing button that makes it available to us. If there are issues, we'll let you know. Honestly, if I can just get my apps to access Dropbox on the FILES app like my iPad can, I'd be thrilled.

But keep delaying or waiting to deliver something "perfect," and by the time you get around to it, we'll all be customers of your competition.

Honestly, the non-responses from the DROPBOX team here are absolutely MIND-BOGGLINGLY dumb. There are so many video reviews of the device. If you STILL don't know what we are doing with our AVP devices, then it's clear you haven't even begun to investigate it.

It's time to make hay while the sun is shining or lose the opportunity to keep what seems to be a decent number of customers now looking for solutions while Box targets us as potential new customers.

[Graham]

Hi @Kcir,

Thank you very much for taking the time to write such a detailed response, I really appreciate the effort you've put into it. Just to clarify, I am a member of the Community team so I work specifically here on the forums.

My question was based out of curiosity, like I said I haven't had a chance to use the Apple Vision Pro yet, so while I have seen lots of great examples here of what it can do and how it can integrate with Dropbox, I was more curious to hear what people liked best about it and how that could potentially make the experience of using Dropbox better, and also help me figure out whether or not to buy one. 😁

Your answer has helped me understand more, and has definitely ticked some boxes for me personally, so thanks again for that. 

As I'm not connected to the teams looking at this, I unfortunately can not give any further updates on the idea at this time, but I'm sure the teams will be back here with an update as soon as they have it.

Thanks again, and have a great day!

Graham

[tomnash]

Graham

It is hard to add much to the excellent comments you have just received from Kcir and Mike_CF.

Frankly, it is really not relevant what our workflows on AVP are for the basic functionality of Dropbox. Dropbox is understood by me and many others to be no more, and no less, than a universal off-site file storage and sharing capability.

Maybe your company has some strategic ideas about specific support of some specialized enterprise workflows that could generate more subscriptions. That's fine, but in the meantime most of the comments here, the polite ones and the rude ones, are simply asking you to fix the universality of your basic capability. 

Whether I am in Lightroom in AVP and need access to some of the 100,000 images I have stored, or I am doing iPad like activities like reading the news, and a message from my wife or attorney comes in and I need access to a document stored off site in Dropbox, I just need the basic Files capability.

I can imagine that since Dropbox is deeply integrated in low levels of the OS that there could be some technical issue to just turning on the iPad compatibility mode. If so, tell us, and try to work it out with Apple.

Unfortunately, the impression you give is that you are strategically no longer interested in customers like us and rather are looking at some dreamed greener pastures. Or you are in some kind of disagreement with Apple over whatever, as is so fashionable in the developer world these days.

In any event, my subscription is up for renewal in fall. This summer I will need to evaluate whether to move my files to Apple Cloud and/or some other offsite storage capability like Box.

Finally, thanks for listening, but do understand that there is a reason, considerable frustration, for your getting so many rather rude comments. Myself, I have, frankly, been struggling to remain polite.

[Graham]

Thank you very much for the additional feedback @tomnash!

Also, apologies if my comment seemed insulting @Mike_CF, it certainly was not meant to come across that way. I can totally understand your frustration. Like I said previously, I am not connected to any of the teams who are currently looking into this, so I can't speak on their behalf, but I am sure they will update here as soon as they can. I was simply trying to understand the needs a little bit better on this one, and perhaps make this thread a little easier to digest for other Community members who visit it.

Thanks again, and have a great day!

Graham

[Kcir]

Hi back @Graham 

Again my apologies if I came out sounding rude, as @tomnash said, the community is getting frustrated by the lack of any substantiative comment from DB.  

The other thing I might point out to the DB team is, by definition anyone with an AVP has probably gained some seniority in life (given its high cost) and as such is probably in a position to recommend to others in their corporation one way or other on the use of DB as a platform for universal file sharing.  Granted the total community of AVP owners is relatively small due to the low number of units produced, so perhaps DB thinks they can or should ignore the group.  My point is the group might have a reach further than their numbers suggest.  And 'we are looking at it' just isn't a response.