Okay, I admit I’m behind the times. I kept my old 2015 Macbook Air until last week, when I noticed its battery was swelling. I just got a MacBook Air M1. So after nearly two years of no substantial MacOS updates, I’ve just crash landed in Ventura. As well, I’ve been actively ignoring new MacOS features for about 4 years now, since my old iron couldn’t run them.
When I went to install Dropbox on the new machine, I received an offer to install something that has me puzzled. None of the Dropbox help files… were helpful.
So, what the flip IS “Dropbox for macOS on File Provider” and how might it help me?
Please feel free to just point me at MacOS documentation if that’s what you feel I need. I probably do.
If there are any MacOS features that have shown up in recent versions that you find particularly helpful, do please mention them! I’ll go research them.
Apple now requires cloud storage providers to offer their sync service through Apple’s new File Provider API. I don’t think you’ll notice any benefits (right now), but you don’t really have a choice. So start the migration. And then make sure to point directories to the new local path ~Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/ where necessary.
Thanks, @November_Sierra ! The link to the File Provider API was just what I needed; the Dropbox doc was too dumbed down for me. After all these years retired, my native language is still Nerd.
Welcome back Silverdragon, nice to see you back. Sorry about your old MacBook Air, but congrats on the new one.
When I went through the same issue with Dropbox earlier this year as part of (finally) upgrading to Monterey, the upgrade automagically created an Alias from ~/Dropbox to ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox so I didn’t need to do anything with any of my tools that were already pointing to Dropbox.
The new MBA is nice. My old MBA was the 11" model with non-Retina screen, but very compact and lightweight. (You can take the girl out of the aerospace industry, but you can’t take aerospace out of the girl… compact and lightweight trump, oh, a lot of inconveniences…) The new one is 8 oz. heavier, but the screen is far more legible and it’s easier to type on, besides. And the battery life is superb, as many here have commented. No need to take a charger with me when going out, which… well, OK, when I subtract the weight of charger and extension cord, I’ve saved 3 oz.! When I worked for the Rocket Ship and Ray Gun Factory, that would have gotten me a commendation.
Besides that, it’s titanium-colored. Call it space gray if you want, but having things that either are or look like they are made of titanium is way cool.
Nope, it was Monterrey. But a lot of Monterrey features were closed off to me because of the age (b. 2015) of my Intel processor. Just for an example, Sidecar: I’ve purged three old third-party “Use your iPad as an external Mac monitor” kludgey systems in favor of Sidecar. I’m not absolutely thrilled with Sidecar, but it works and I don’t have to worry whether the next MacOS will break it (well, OK, it might break but the third-party apps broke every upgrade.)
Besides, with the new bigger, higher-resolution screen I may not NEED to schlep my iPad with me to be able to see what I’m doing…
Ah, sorry, I misread your “actively ignoring new MacOS features for about 4 years” as not updating at all. Hm, let’s see, coming from Monterrey…
One obvious addition is “Stage Manager”. Some people love it, some people hate it. I really like the addition of the Weather and Clock apps. End-to-end encryption for iCloud (“Advanced Data Protection”) is rather hidden, but a huge feature for me.
I’ve looked at the description of “Stage manager” and it doesn’t thrill me. I generally know what windows I might have open and click on the app in the dock to display them–why learn another way of working? I suppose I should turn it on at least once to check it out.
Similarly, Stacks: I keep my desktop very clean, and generally search for apps in Spotlight. Once I have the app open I look in the Recents (or Favorites, in the case of Scrivener) menu to see what I’ve been working on lately. I just don’t keep docs on my desktop; instead I have a few aliases to folders there–perhaps I’ve already implemented my own crude version of Stacks To me, the advantage is that I don’t have to deal with Apple’s classifications. Apple’s idea of how things Ought To Be Organized and mine… don’t match.
I’ll take a look Weather and Clock–thanks for the tip!
In case you’re not aware, Apple Silicon – of which the M1 is – can run iOS apps. Not all vendors allow their iPad/iPhone apps to run on macOS, but plenty do. It’s certainly worth a look.
I’d have hung onto it, but with the case and keyboard bulging I figured I needed to replace it quick before it exploded… otherwise I might well have just replaced the battery (as I had twice before) and soldiered on until some feature I Just Had To Have arrived in MacOS land…
I think mine has lasted as long as it has because I don’t use it every day. If I’d have used it as a daily driver, it would have been toast a while ago.
Yes, me too! If saving Scrivener Projects to iCloud results in corrupted files and lossed data, will this new requirement by Apple result in the same problems with Scrivener Projects saved to DropBox cloud storage? Saveing un-archived Scrivener project files to DropBox has bee advocated by Litterature & Latte as a safe alternative to iCloud cloud storage. Are our Scrivener Project files safe from the corruption problems associated with iCloud if one uses DropBox now that DropBox with Apple’s “File Provider” API?
Saveing un-archived Scrivener project files to DropBox has been advocated by Litterature & Latte as a safe alternative to iCloud cloud storage. Are our Scrivener Project files safe from the corruption problems associated with iCloud if one uses DropBox now that DropBox with Apple’s “File Provider” API?
In the Scrivener doccumentation, on the Scrivener section of the Litterature & Latte web site, and in the “Backing Up Your Work” video on your site’s “Video Tutorials” page, as well as in the Webinar Library session “How to Master Scrivener’s Backup Features”, the advice to use DropBox as THE place to save and store and access one’s Scrivener projects is direct and unmistakable. Here in this community, and by email, you and several other Litterature & Latte representitives have directly explained that iCloud causes Scrivener project data integrety problems as a result of how iCloud reads from and writes to the Package files that Scrivener saves in XML format. Advice given here and elsewhere is that Scrivner project document packages are not safe on Apple’s iCloud cloud storage servers. I have had to learn this the hard way and am still very much suffering the consequences of lost projects and project content integrety. So… the obvious question is, as Apple pushes to have all of its cloud services competitors adhear to its new remote server storage file system protocols, will services like DropBox now be corrupting Scrivener project files in the same way that iCloud corrupts Scrivener project files? Anyone at Litterature & Latte know enough about this new Apple file protocol to answer these questions with authority? Will DropBox now start to corrupt my Scrivener projects documents the way iCloud does? Or, did Apple in this new remote file storrage proticol solve the problems that caused iCloud to eat Scrivener documents in the first place?
but the screen is far more legible and it’s easier to type on, besides. And the battery life is superb, as many here have commented. No need to take a charger with me when going out, which… well, OK, when I subtract the weight of charger and extension cord, I’ve saved 3 oz.! 
When I worked for the Rocket Ship and Ray Gun Factory, that would have gotten me a commendation.
Hm, let’s see, coming from Monterrey…