>The mobile era started just as Dropbox started to solve a computer era problem.

I still can't wrap my head around how people find their files in the non-filesystem world. Whenever I need to work with files I take out my laptop.

I'd argue Dropbox became as big as they are thanks to mobile taking off.

In a computer only world there are myriads of other solutions, elegant or not.

Most work computers were permanently plugged into network shared folders, and would have over the VPN access for on the road salesmen etc.

Home users mostly didn't care about cloud storage or shareable folders, those who did could get away with ftp (basically supported everywhere, like straight in explorer windows)

Dropbox flourished because most people got a second device, always connected, but with no decent file management. Many of us used Dropbox not even for sync but just to properly handle files.

Is this still the case? I have a "Files" app on my iPhone that shows me files and folders stored on my device, I can save/load files from most apps (that have a concept of files) and it's even integrated with iCloud so when I save a file to my phone's Downloads, I can access it from my Mac (and vice-versa).

I don't know about Android but on iOS I feel like we've had a simple and ubiquitous user-facing file system for a while. I use it all the time.

I suppose it might not be top of mind for most users because it wasn't there for so long.

Android does, on iDevices it is still a kind of afterthought.