Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Commercial
FolderShare yanks Mac version amid bugs
I really like FolderShare. I've recommended it to friends, and even to you,
the readers of this blog. And one of the best things about it is that
it's cross-platform. If you have a Mac at home and a Windows machine at
work, FolderShare lets you effortlessly sync the two, so that you can,
for example, keep your iTunes libraries up-to-date on both machines, or
make sure that you always have your office documents at home if you
need to review them. However, it looks like that cross-platform promise
is in jeopardy. FolderShare recently removed the Mac version of the
program from their site, with the cryptic message
that "The Mac version is currently unavailable, but will be back up by
this weekend. More details will follow in the next few days." And while
there's no other info available via FolderShare, now-deleted support
forum entries show a number of bug reports,
including syncing glitches. After viewing the bug reports, I checked my
FolderShare setup, and sure enough, found some serious syncing
problems, including a folder that is meant to be synced up, but has
over 1,300 files on the Mac, and just 950 on the Windows machine. Very
disturbing. But what's more disturbing is the way FolderShare has
handled the problems. Not only are the message boards gone, but the
company's blog is as well. FolderShare seems to be engaged in a
campaign of obfuscation, pretending that the bug doesn't exist, and
hoping that customers won't catch on before a fix is released. That's a
poor policy under any circumstances, and is even worse when consumers
are relying on the service to sync important data. Come clean,
FolderShare, before your customers start deserting you for other
services.