Request regarding MacOS X 10.10 (Yosemite) & 10.11 (El Capitan)

[justmeinNJ]

I just received a notice that dropbox will cease support for OS 10.10 and 10.11.

The notice, giving it the most leeway i can, indicated that i should consider upgrading my OS or use a web browser.  This is not always possible.

For many of us, we are at the end of the line re: OS upgrades. I have an old macbook pro that i use for a few light tasks - but the data must be available on others machines. I use dropbox for this.  I also cannot use the web browser unless i wish to upload files with each change.  Impractical.

I will likely wind up switching to a different cloud service, which i would prefer not to do - yet maybe i must.

I don't know why you are ending support. The clients exist already and are unlikely to require many changes, if any.  Please reconsider.

--justmeinNJ

[eblake]

After a review of the file sharing I need to do, post retirement, I realized that I can use iClouddrive to share my files across my iMac, iPad, iMacAir, and iPhone.  I really don't need Drop Box as I no longer share files with an associate.  That was why I started Drop Box in the first place.  Just kept using it as it was handy and comfortable.  Dropping support for MacOS10.11 makes it uncomfortable.  Made me look at iCloud and made the switch.  Good By Drop Box!

[Emarjay]

I’m pleased you are able to find such an easy solution. My problem is that I still have a daughter with whom I have a shared Dropbox for family history files. She has a more modern computer and uses Dropbox with others so I’m being forced to look at buying a cheap but more modern Mac second hand in order to keep the system going. It’s DISGRACEFUL that we LOYAL CUSTOMERS were given so little time to decide what to do.

[ADE Media]

Completely agree with this. We run very stable El Capitan macs with bespoke applications. One month to upgrade the OS, rewrite and test our apps simply isn't enough. If they'd given notice six months ago I would have accepted it, but just over a month isn't viable. 

[alluvialsphinx]

Appreciate this response, Walter, but Dropbox still does not fully work on the latest Mac OS. To remove support from any Mac OS at this point is extremely irresponsible.

[Robinz]

@alluvialsphinx I didn't even realize this! I fully agree. I posted to @dropboxsupport on Twitter and I suggest others do this too.

[Samuel R.]

I second everything that has been said. For me this unwanted upgrade means that I have to abandon my perfectly working system and buy a new computer, since the one I use now doesn´t work with later versions of OS X. And I really hate to be forced into upgrading hardware that works. We have a climate crisis and it shouldn´t be allowed making upgrades that forces people to consume more hardware, a consumption that inevitably speeds up climate change.

[JackinCA]

Walter--echoing some of what others have said, here are my gripes:

1) The email I got about the October 2022 upgrade did not provide an exact date in October. I contacted the service rep on line and she said she did not know an exact date when OS10.11 would no longer work. She would have left it at that but I pressed her to ask someone higher up. I got a reply an hour os so later to the effect that an exact date for cut-off had not been set. Here, you are saying October 17. Why do you have the date but your service reps do not? The date is rather critical since my choices were to either right away spend 4-5 hours (ie, losing a work day) getting my current OS upgraded or plopping down $5k immediately at the Mac store to get a new computer delivered in time. 

2) I asked the rep if I upgraded to Catalina--OS10.15, if Dropbox would still support me past October. The response "to the best of my knowledge". So now I'm trusting my files to a company that does not know when its roll-out date is and isn't really sure what will still be working afterward. When I hit the support page re system requirements, it only says that I will need Monterey (ie, 12.0), but does not mention 10.15 and up and how long those are expected to work--or if I'm losing functionality if I stay with 10.15 and not Monterey.

3) Too short notice--so even assuming October 17 is the roll out date, I need to buy a new iMac to run Monterey. But the Mac store says the package I would need to buy will take longer than that to deliver.

4) Beyond all of that--The latest iMac version that supports Monterey was sold in 2017. Basically what Dropbox is telling us is that to continue using Dropbox we are required to invest $5,000 to $6,000 every five years in a new computer, while the current one is still working just fine otherwise. I can't see how this is a sustainable business model on your end. I'm resigned to upgrade the computer about every ten years, but five is pretty extreme.

[tonybosley]

You're absolutely right.  This is pure idiocy on the part of Dropbox.   There are so many of us (like me) who have entire systems set up whereby it's just not possible to simply "upgrade".  My main computer is a 2008 Mac Pro which doesn't go any further than 10.11.  I have so much software tangled up here, and I'm in the midst of major production that is going to take me months and years to complete.  I can't miss a step here, and now you're suddenly "announcing", like a bunch of fascists, that you're discontinuing support for OSX 10.10 and 10.11 ???????   Are you crazy?   Why?????  Just leave us alone and let us do our work FFS. 

If you actually go through with this, I am DEFINITELY switching to pCloud.  I'll be more than happy to pay whatever they want to charge.  It'll be a hell of a lot easier, and cheaper, than trying to replace my entire work station and upgrade all this software. 

I really don't wish you people well.  This is a really cold, heartless and callous decision on your part.  You think everybody out here has the "latest, greatest" hardware???? We're all just slick hipsters like you with fancy lofts in Manhattan?  Is that it?   You have a very warped view of what's happening in the real world.

We are people just struggling to get by and complete our projects, using the gear we HAVE.  We don't have the means to be "up on all the latest gadgets" (and studio spaces) like you do. 

Go back to the drawing board and figure out a way to make this work for all of us poor little peasants out here who are not as fortunate as you.

[Robinz]

And it looks like Dropbox has problems with other OS, so why discontinue the one that it actually working reliably.

[Colin W.1]

yup pretty sure they mean that sync will stop, that is done by background software and they are choosing to switch that off so they can move forward with new or better features. I have yet to find out why, at a tech level that might be. I have a few ideas why but they do not fully pan out to me... maybe some useful info at the ever-great former writer for macUser, Howard Oakley e.g. at

https://eclecticlight.co/2022/01/29/looking-ahead-to-macos-12-3-python-dropbox-and-onedrive-changes/

So maybe it is lack of Python they are tooling up for or the changing emphasis in disk formats as SSDs take over...

I hope to find out more and agitate, this is bad news for me as I'm 100% with the publisher people on page 1. Bad news and I need longer to move to some other service and stop paying them