Personally, I was pretty frustrated at that shift because I successfully and happily used old versions until it was “time” to update (2 then 4 (which was at the upgrade cost), then one more before I was pushed to the subscription). It always worked great. Tbh I’m still frustrated that their choice to self-host the syncing service became our costs (I used Dropbox just fine and that didn’t cost them anything), but now that I’m past the sticker shock (my costs easily went up 8X) I’m more comfortable with the stability of their company and breathing room they have to build the hard technology.

Thanks for bringing it up: 1Password is a necessary example for this debate.

Regarding building in their own sync, I think it’s actually a good thing. Naively syncing encrypted files can’t achieve the reliability of conflict resolution that a semantically aware app-level sync can.

On a side note, I moved away from Dropbox a couple years ago as their product became bloated as they seek growth with increased desperation. That is not a trait that I want in a company I allow to install kernel extensions on my machine.