Keep in mind Dropbox literally got its start with adding the sync icons in Finder when Apple said it could not be done. The entire company was essentially based on their ability to make a better user experience through a tighter integration with your files then was technically allowed at the time. I'm not saying you have to find that acceptable but it is what it is and its the reason why millions of people have heard of Dropbox and proclaim its joys.
Anyway both things you mention are bugs even if you find them frustrating. The original poster was having issue with the option to turn off the Finder integration but the option was put there so you can control it. The only reason you can't access files with more than fifteen in a folder is clearly due to a bug in the beta.
If you want to say that a company the size of Dropbox should never have bugs of that scale even in their beta, then I would point at several of Apple's broken iOS updates (bricking phones, etc.) or Samsung's recent Galaxy Note 7 fiasco as evidence that much larger companies ship software and hardware that isn't in beta and has undergone much more due diligence with catastrophic bugs.
Anyway I don't use Dropbox really but I felt compelled to comment because I couldn't understand how you could say you expect bugs but don't expect the reported bugs in a beta.
You're right: in a sense, "everything you don't like is a bug". But it still seems important to distinguish "they broke the entire permission model, where I can no longer trust the sandbox boundaries" and "I'm locked out of crucial parts of my system" from "gosh, this is slower/more confusing than I might like".
I'm not sure the beta testers understood they were giving up that level of control by installing Dropbox's new software. The post's author certainly didn't.
True, Dropbox got away with grabbing permissions that apps shouldn't have, and then getting away with it. But it's still IMHO a bit more than a bug to take this attitude of "let's take whatever we can! It's Easier To Ask For Forgiveness..."
> But it still seems important to distinguish "they broke the entire permission model, where I can no longer trust the sandbox boundaries" and "I'm locked out of crucial parts of my system" from "gosh, this is slower/more confusing than I might like".
Well, if they succeeded at that it means the permission model is broken, and you can not trust the sandbox boundaries, whether you have Dropbox installed or not. So no reason to be angry at Dropbox; ask Apple to fix the sandbox model instead.
Yeah I hear you. I wouldn't say "everything you don't like is a bug" but if there is a dropdown to select something and it doesn't work then its a bug.
If not in a beta, where would you expect these issues to be revealed?
I am guessing that Dropbox has roughly 4 stages of "releasing":
1. Something for devs working on this feature get to see it in action. I would guess this means a few hundred people see this release.
2. A release for dropbox employees. I would guess a few thousand people see this release, and since they work at Dropbox I would guess that 99.9% of them keep these features enabled.
3. A beta release. This is the first time that we are likely to see anyone who actively disables integration features use the product, and even that is probably minimal.
4. Official release.
You are extremely unlikely to see people disabling features like this in (1) and (2) unless the feature is so broken they can't use it. In fact they probably encourage people not to disable it so they can get more feedback about how the new integration is working. This leaves (3) the beta release as the most likely spot for this type of bug to pop up.
This isn't a non-reversible bug. It doesn't delete your files or do anything that can't be reversed by reverting to an official release of Dropbox or quitting the app, both of which are relatively easy fixes.
It also isn't a bug that is likely to be caught by the majority of Dropbox users. Based on my interactions with people, at least 75% of them keep the OS integrations enabled. Only techies even consider disabling it.
As a result, this seems like exactly the type of bug that I would expect to see in a beta release, and I can't see any real harm in it making it that far.
Don't you think it's possible that it is just a bug that "enable finder integration" being unchecked doesn't disable this by greying out "finder toolbar" and disabling it?
This post is full of ridiculous hyperbole, and it really detracts from the actual message.