[Update November 1, 2021: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston has said that his company is working on a native M1 build. It plans to release it in the first half of 2022. Original post below]
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It looks likes users with M1 Macs shouldn’t expect native support from Dropbox any time soon. MacRumors reported on a long-running support thread discussing the issue of Apple Silicon.
An official Dropbox support thread, shared by Mitchell Hashimoto on Twitter, reveals a fiasco around native support for Apple silicon Macs. Dropbox is seemingly insisting that a significant number of community members will have to vote for native Apple silicon support for it to be implemented. There are also multiple repetitious requests with different phrasing, fragmenting users’ votes for support. In July, responses from Dropbox staff on the thread explained that “this idea is going to need a bit more support before we share your suggestion with our team,” and flagged Apple silicon support as in need of more votes. A month ago, Dropbox staff again replied to the thread requesting native Apple silicon support, saying that Dropbox will continue to be compatible with all devices that run supported versions of macOS using Apple’s Rosetta translation layer. Additional complaints in the thread claim that Dropbox with Rosetta hemorrhages MacBook battery life and uses a disproportionate amount of memory.
Check It Out: Native Dropbox Support For M1 Macs Doesn’t Seem to be Happening
Charlotte:
This makes little sense to me, at least from the standpoint of a business plan.
The Apple community comprises a substantial fraction of the Dropbox user base, and the enthusiasm in that community for SoC supported Macs indicates a steep upward trajectory for adoption. One would have thought that such adaptation was already well underway (or perhaps it is, but they don’t want their competition to know just far along). Dropbox already supports SoC enabled devices, like the iPad Pro, granted via a distinct OS; nonetheless with major players in the industry moving to support this system, including MS for their Windows OS, Dropbox’s stance reads like a prayer for relegation.
Google, MS and other third have can only hope that Dropbox stick to their guns.