alt Hacker News>it would never have existed in a world without NAT because it wouldn't have been needed,
I'm sorry, but this claim is one of the brightest examples of false consenses effect I've seen in ages. People generally just prefer an icon on desktop to click/tap. And that's the reason Dropbox found its audience.
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You ignored the second half of that sentence:
> syncing data between computers you owned that all had publicly routable addresses is a much simpler problem.
In no way am I denying that people would like to solve the same problems easily. What I'm saying is that it would have been a much simpler problem requiring much less infrastructure. An application like SyncThing that works without any central infrastructure would have been an order of magnitude easier to implement in a world where every internet connected device had a unique routable address.
Now imagine if you didn't need that icon and Windows Explorer (or whatever file manager you use) could just connect to wherever your file is. Maybe through a "Favorite."