14 DAY TRIAL // It’s official: Dropbox has finally reached version 1.0 after over two years of public beta testing! By far the most powerful, reliable, and easy-to-use service of its kind, Dropbox now delivers a much-improved user experience, with 50% less memory usage, a new feature called Selective Sync, and overall better performance across all levels.
The development crew behind this invaluable piece of software is “super excited to announce the new hotness that we’ve been cooking up for the past few months: Dropbox 1.0!”
Jon Ying, a member of the team behind Dropbox, claims that “Dropbox 1.0 is strong enough to sync your entire digital life yet still lightweight and fast.”
He delves into the noteworthy enhancements, beginning with the completely re-architected client-side sync engine with the purpose of optimizing the response time, scale, and resource consumption.
“Keeping track of millions of files can require lots of memory if not done properly,” Ying explains. “This version reduces memory usage by up to 50%. It’s speedier and more efficient when handling big changes to your Dropbox while ensuring that smaller changes remain quick,” he reveals.
The announcement continues, with Ying outlining that Dropbox 1.0 should offer an overall better user experience thanks to the completely redesigned setup wizard on all three supported platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux).
Simply put, this change was necessary “to make it easier to get started using Dropbox.”
The preference menus are also more organized, and intuitive, Ying reveals.
For the Mac OS X version in particular, the development team has rewritten the entire app to only use Cocoa.
The reason? To make Dropbox look and feel “much more native on the Mac.”
Finally, Ying mentions the addition of two new features: Selective Sync which, as its name implies, allows users to select which folders to sync on which systems (good for saving space and, of course, privacy), and Extended Attribute Sync, which should reduce the number of corrupted files, by recognizing and properly syncing resource forks.
“1.0 is a milestone for us, and with it we want to communicate our confidence that Dropbox is stable, high-quality software,” Ying adds.
“The service has grown from a simple sync app to something that’s changed the way lots of people work and communicate. But just because this version of Dropbox has a new number doesn’t mean that we’re anywhere close to finished.”
“We have a long way to go before we realize our goal of making it easy for everyone to always have access to their stuff. Stay tuned for more!”, he concludes, thanking “fanatical” forum testers for all their help.