Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Commercial

FolderShare yanks Mac version amid bugs

foldershareI 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.