Apple is still in the process of transitioning away from Intel-made processors. It made another huge leap in the right direction with the launch of the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. And while that process continues, third-party companies that build apps for Macs need to figure out whether or not they support that effort on their own. Dropbox, apparently, has made a decision.
Update (10/28/2021): So, turns out Dropbox does actually have native M1 Mac support in the works. Here’s the company’s CEO on the matter:
We're certainly supporting Apple Silicon, sorry for the confusion. We've been working for a while on a native M1 build which we aim to release in H1 2022. (And agree the responses in the support thread were not ideal)
— Drew Houston (@drewhouston) October 28, 2021
The original article continues below.
The trouble is that the decision doesn’t appear to be the best one, all things considered. It’s worth noting right out of the gate that, technically, the Dropbox app for Mac still works on Apple silicon Macs. That’s thanks to Rosetta 2, Apple’s implementation to make sure that apps built for Intel chips still work on Apple’s newer refreshed hardware.
But, that’s not native support. And the dream is that all apps built for Macs, even those that still support Intel chips, offer support for Apple’s M-series processors, too. That native support has some big gains, and not just in performance. Still, it’s up to developers to make the leap, and while Apple has made inroads for that transition to be easy, it’s still a task — and one that can be pretty big, depending on the app in question.
Dropbox is probably no small feat in development terms, considering its scope. But it appears Dropbox doesn’t have any current, public plans to support Apple silicon Macs. Mitchell Hashimoto, a developer, shared on Twitter recently a forum thread on Dropbox’s site that reveals as much:
Dropbox doesn't support Apple Silicon natively yet and has no current public plans to. The official responses in this thread are embarrassing. Honestly, didn't think the reason to switch after 12 years of paid sub would be this but this might be it. https://t.co/OjthQ32phV
— Mitchell Hashimoto (@mitchellh) October 27, 2021
That thread is from a whole host of Dropbox users that have raised questions regarding native support for Apple silicon Macs. There appears to be a lot of interest from Dropbox users, but, as it stands, Dropbox employees have swooped in to say that it will take even more interest from Dropbox users before they even start to really consider building support for Apple’s M-series processors.
Interestingly enough, that interest from Dropbox users may also be causing an issue in counting those votes for support. There are various threads, all essentially saying –requesting– the same thing, but that appears to be scattering the vote count.
Last month, Dropbox staff said that the app will continue to work just fine thanks to Rosetta 2. But many people have pointed out that using Dropbox in this way on a Mac has detrimental impact to performance and battery life. Building native support for Apple silicon Macs would fix that, which would be good!
As it stands, Dropbox has made its decision. One can only hope that changes sooner rather than later.