I, too, have fond memories of the old one-time purchase modality of software vending, but I have to admit such an arrangement is largely untenable for any software company which wishes to maintain a high quality product across multiple platforms over the long haul.

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.