I decided a while back to cancel my Dropbox subscription, for a variety of reasons I won’t get into here. In doing so, it put me in the “free tier” of Dropbox, which only grants 2GB, and I have much, much more than that.

So I decided to try to clean it up using Dropbox’s web application. Aside from the constant reminders that I’m out of space and that I should upgrade, the web application (and the iOS application, for that matter) refuse the cooperate in deleting files. I get a number of obtuse or useless error messages:

• “Could not delete X items.” — Hmm, okay. WHY? It won’t say, and repeated attempts results in the same stupid error message.
• “Too many files in one request. Please try again with fewer files.” — I’ve gotten this one trying to delete a folder that contains nothing. Good job, Dropbox. Ship it.

Call me cynical, but it seems like this kind of stupidity is deliberately programmed into the applications, in an attempt to get me to upgrade. But if your company is this malicious (I’m looking at you, Apple-of-recent-days), I will not be giving you my money. And if it’s because the software is just that bad, I will not be giving you my money.

Dropbox used to be cool and useful, and they’ve outgrown their britches (*cough* Apple *cough*). Full of hubris, cruft, and money-grubbing shenanigans. No thanks.