[..]Anyone that had used previous file synchronization programs, including Apple’s own iDisk, constantly encountered state problems. Modifications in one location would get out of synch with those in another, ruining the entire premise of seamless synchronization. It wasn’t that these other companies did not understand the problem, it was just that they could not execute on the solution. The Dropbox team solved this, which was a critical innovation.[..]
Not true. They solved nothing, they copied existing solutions, and hide the problems. If there is some conflicting file, the just rename them to "$FILENAME (Conflict Copy from $MACHINE $DATE)" and then...do nothing!
I was really shocked when i discovered that my systems had hundreds of those conflicts, and i did never became a message about them from dropbox.
You're not really fair. Yes, it's true that osx has 3rd-party-package-manager. But it's also true that they can be very complicated, or simply broken. The easy'ness of a good linux-distribution is just not possibly with osx. The days where you need to hack yourself something togehter, just to get some basic applications, are gone...at least on linux.