I don’t get it, but hopefully you can explain.
After you have copied the files via iTunes, what kind of “syncing” do you mean that you need? You just open it, right? So what would the ‘utility’ do?
There is no real ‘syncing’ involved, because all versions of Scrivener read the same files. You just copy the files from one to the other. So what do you need the 'utilit’y for? 
I don’t get the anti-Dropbox brigade. - It works.
Yes they had a security issue a while back, but then so have MS, Google, Yahoo, it’s an evolving field. Reality though, most breaches are a result of poor password/security practices by customers.
For instance, the iCloud hack, nothing to do with a failure on Apple’s part. Customers using easy to guess passwords across multiple platforms. Breach one with a phishing email and you’ve got the lot.
Dropbox are on face value, more inclined towards privacy that Google, Tahoo, Facebook, and reasonably password security makes it as secure as most anything commercially available.
The Dropbox/iTunes combo gives two options which seems to satisfy most needs.
As the L&L team have said, if you don’t like that ask Apple for a refund. They are extremely co-operative that way.
with all due respect and no offense intended. Do you even know what syncing is ?
Lets end this discussion here. Its not gonna lead anywhere. LL knows what I am talking about. You obviously don’t.
cheerio
so, because they ALL scoop and market private customer data that makes it OK ? They can only do that because you and others let them do it and you are using their products. Especially the free ones. A while back ? Are you following the international tug of war on online privacy at all, or where have you obtained the face value ? A while back ?
I said at another post earlier. I don’t have to use MS, Google, Yahoo, FB, Twitter, Linkedn, Snapchat, Whatsup and the other data vultures. They are nowhere in my workflow so it is MY choice if I use them and pay for it with my data. If I am forced to use them then that’s a different story. And exactly that’s what we have here with Dropbox and Scrivener. And there is no beautification of that situation. We are being mandated to use Dropbox if we want to have a way to Sync our Scrivener projects between platforms.
Thanks for my morning laugh 
. More inclined. I’ll take that to heart even though I think your and my inclinometer are showing different results. Sort of like a sheep raised and living in a Wolf-pack, right ?
There is no SYNC via iTunes. Its copying complete project files. Why don’t you go and work on one of your projects on your phone, pad and laptop, just make one change in each file, and then SYNC via iTunes. Then come back and we talk again. There is NO needs met of any non-Dropbox user !!!
I know you want me to go away so you don’t have to think about what Dropbox does to you . How often do I have to say that I don’t want a refund. I love Scrivener, why shouldn’t I voice my dissatisfaction if the new Scrivener car only runs if I buy a steering wheel from Dropbox and agree to their business practices .
'nuff said
Completely copying the project across is still synchronization at the project level (the minimum level necessary for the fidelity of a Scrivener project) even if the data copied is not as granular as you would like. It’s merely a brute-force synchronization.
You’re confusing the goal with the mechanism(s) required to achieve that goal.
All synchronization is, at the end of the day, is “Does the object in location A match the object in location B?” That’s the goal.
The mechanisms used by sync services such as Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, etc. tend to be ones that try to minimize the amount of data sent over the wire by only copying what has changed. That’s a worthy design goal for modern infrastructure – keep the bits sent over limited data connections to the minimum possible. But that is not an absolute REQUIREMENT for a synchronization solution. These services use the file as the most granular object they look at – if you change one byte in the file, the whole file gets copied. Synchronization services used for other purposes can go even more granular – block level for disk file systems, even byte-level for really exotic stuff – but for Scrivener, file level is adequate (as long as you get all the files in the project).
However, not all sync services are created equal. iTunes offers a rudimentary sync service, but it doesn’t offer file-level granularity. It still gets the project synchronized between desktop and mobile device, however. And L&L has spent a lot of time explaining the technical reasons why Dropbox is the only alternative to iTunes in Scrivener – the other services work in such a fashion that they are far more likely to cause corruption to project files. Most people don’t have the same issues with Dropbox that you do, so the engineering decision L&L made is the right one for them.
This wasn’t a choice between Dropbox and some other service. This was a choice between Dropbox and nothing (other than iTunes), because despite what you think about their service, at the end of the day it’s the only one that gets the bits synched without breaking them. It doesn’t matter how ideologically superior other services are if they break your data on a regular basis.
What you’re really asking for (demanding, really) is that L&L completely re-architect Scrivener’s file format, which would violate some of the basic design goals and features that are possible in today’s Scrivener without offering any sort of recompense for the users who don’t care about mobile synchronization. Your demands would affect ALL of Scrivener’s users, and mostly in a bad way.
You can make that decision for yourself. You can’t make that for the rest of us.
It’s not that anyone wants you to go away – it’s that we want you to acknowledge that your particular concerns don’t somehow make you morally superior to the rest of the L&L user base and certainly don’t give you the right to keep badgering L&L and the rest of us on this subject. You’ve asked. L&L has responded. If you’re not happy with that, join the rest of us who have some aspect of Scrivener we’d like to see changed but L&L has heard our views and decided otherwise. And then we continue using it without complaining. Using Dropbox doesn’t make us stupid – it simply means that we don’t have the same set of priorities and concerns you do.
Could all parties to this thread stay away from personalities and ideology, please?
Choice of sync services is a matter of balancing tradeoffs among an individual’s priorities. It is not an indicator of an individual’s ethics or lack thereof.
Katherine