Mac Dropbox performance news - Dropbox 1.0 release

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: June 4, 2016

Mac Dropbox news: Dropbox.com has announced a new release of their Dropbox backup and syncing software, bringing them up to Dropbox 1.0. The new version offers "hundreds of bug fixes, vastly reduced resource usage, selective sync, and a new installation wizard."

Here's a quick look at the new Dropbox.com features, with a little focus on Mac Dropbox features:

Hundreds of bug fixes: Okay, nothing sexy there, but glad they're fixed.

Huge performance enhancements: Mac Dropbox performance improvements are very welcome, thank you. I've often seen Dropbox processes on my Mac show up with pretty high CPU use, so this is good. The Dropbox press release says "This version reduces Dropbox memory use by up to 50% ... it's speedier and more efficient when handling big changes."

(I've seen Dropbox processes show up both when using the Mac Terminal "top" application, and in the cool iStat Menus application, which I've written about in this Mac CPU and memory use monitor article.)

Selective Sync: From the Dropbox announcement: "If you have a netbook or a computer with a tiny hard drive, syncing your entire Dropbox isn’t always a great idea. Selective Sync solves these problems! You now can choose which folders get downloaded to which computers." For many users, myself included, this news is huge. (For detailed information, see the Dropbox link below.)

Mac Dropbox enhancements

For Mac Dropbox users there are two enhancements that look really good:

Better Mac Dropbox User Experience: While the Dropbox setup wizard has been rewritten for all platforms, Mac Dropbox has been completely rewritten in Cocoa, so it has a much more native Mac look and feel experience, and the Mac Dropbox download size is reduced by 20%.

Extended Attribute Sync: Again, direct from the Dropbox press release: "Syncing resource forks have historically been a pain for Mac users. In case you don’t know, resource forks are a secret area of a file that certain applications use to store important data. Most sync programs today completely ignore these forks, which results in a corrupted file on the other end. But worry not! Resource forks and other extended attributes now work great with Dropbox."