Mac Client Withdrawal
Today, we’ve made the decision to withdraw our Mac Beta Client. As of today, the Mac Beta Client is no longer available for new users to download. Existing users of the Mac Beta Client can continue to use it until July 31st at which time service will be discontinued.
Syncplicity was founded to provide a rich and reliable synchronization, sharing, collaboration, and backup service. One of the key cornerstones we aim for is an exceptional client experience.
One of the main purposes for a Beta is to help perform full testing and validation in real world scenarios. What has become clear to us is while the Mac Beta Client can run well in many scenarios and computer configurations, there are also many for which it doesn’t work well. Over the past few months we’ve been taking a close look at the unexpected issues that some of you have experienced. Unfortunately what we found is that the fixes entail almost a rewrite in many cases — a process that would take many months to a year.
We want everything we release to be outstanding and something we’re extremely proud to offer our users. It’s clear now the Mac Beta Client isn’t there yet, so we will be withdrawing it for reengineering. We will reassess our schedule for redevelopment next year.
For those of you who have signed up for a yearly account, you will be able to cancel and receive a full refund of your $99 subscription fee. For those who have signed up for a monthly account, you will be able to cancel and receive a refund for the most recent month. Details on how to do so will be e-mailed directly to you in the coming days, but you must request a refund no later than December 31st, 2009.
If you have any questions, we’ve set up a dedicated e-mail for you: macbeta@syncplicity.com.
Obviously like all companies, our intention is for Beta software to always become Final Release software. But it’s just as important to recognize and admit when software doesn’t meet our high quality bar. Our decision to withdraw the Mac Beta Client will allow us to step back to do things much better in the future. While it isn’t an easy decision for us, it is the right decision. We do want to express our apologies for any and all inconveniences this may have caused each of you. We do hope that you give us another chance to deliver future products that meet the level of excellence reflective our existing ones.
Sincerely,
Leonard
–
Leonard Chung, CEO
An alternative is NomaDesk, they just released a public beta yesterday.
http://www.nomadesk.com/download
Might be a good alternative if you have a mac.
Hope the new Mac client will support Leopard (not only Snow)…and can run on PPC as well.
Thats too bad!
I absolutely LOVED your services! The thing is, I only use macs, and without support, I’m going to look for an alternative!
Please let me know if you ever decide to support mac again!
Cheers,
This is troubling. I was just recommending your service to all my mac readers/followers/friends and clients. Now I have to send emails and tweets and messages telling them this service is no longer viable.
No one I knew had any trouble with Syncplicity for the Mac. Just today I was raving on how it saved me after my MacBook Pro fell to the ground, shattering.
Within 24 hours I had restored all 7000+ documents from my Syncplicity drive in the clouds back onto my new MacBook Pro.
My stomach dropped when I got the news today.
-justin
Verbiee 
That’s rather unfortunate. On the bright side, I’ve started playing with Dropbox, and so far their Mac client works great!
@ mikhail v
i havent worked at syncplicity since december of last year. i am sure they have been making great improvements to the client since. it is strange, however, that it took them six and a half months after the initial beta release to realize that it wasnt good enough. then again, software development is very hard.
Many months to a year ?
Damn, you’ll probably lose me as a customer. Except if I don’t find an alternative in this period, but that’s very unlikely.
I’ve never seen a service that goes beta then discarded for many months … For an alpha product, that would be ok as alpha quite means “don’t touch me I’m dangerous”.
I’m very disappointed.
I was happy with the product ….
Dropbox is also very good (could even say better) but offers only 2-3GB for free – and then you jump to 50MB.
Anyone knows of other solutinos, ideally with up to 5GB free and/or you can pay for smaller increments to capacity?
It’s the many months to a year that suggests that this isn’t an engineering problem but maybe one of resources. Do they have the cash to pay for it? Good software takes time but I’m sure it is possible to develop a useful client for the latest Mac OS only for example in a timescale of 1-3 months. That might satisfy the core user base.
This “many months to a year” needs further explaining as it sucks the credibility out of the whole post.
I’m one of those who happily paid my annual scubscription. It’s really disappointing and you can imagine the celebrations going on at Dropbox. Come on syncplicity – get your finger out!
Ditto on the “many months to a year.” There is simply more to it than Syncplicity is telling everyone. My speculation would be that there is: a) a serious security vulnerability that is difficult to address; b) given the resources needed to support it, the base of mac users does not justify the cost.
Well, thanks for the service while it lasted… off to getdropbox.com…
Leonard… I am disappoint.
I and my colleges where absolutely happy with the product and had never experienced any problems. So it is not really clear to us why the withdrawal happened. Due to the fact we do need a sync between us we have to look for an alternative.
Brendt
For this decission I’m sure you have lost many many customers, I’m one of them.
I’m moving for other service like this. I’m disappointed and a company that can’t relase a final version even with more efford time or cost…. If I were a only windows user, I will look for other company with the same service for this reason.
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What a coincidence?
Today i realize that my new macbook pro just needs a syncplicity client. Then i couldn’t find the mac client download link anywhere on the site. And then this blog post…
I’m sure you are going to develop a better mac client next year.
By the way, thank you for this great service.