The developer worked his ass off to repurpose his app to Lemmy for us.
I was more than happy to pay for his time. Hard work deserves reward. If people aren't going to pay him and use the free version, which you're welcome to, then he makes his money from ads (which pay fuck-all)
You're just a bunch of cheapskates who want to be entertained for nothing.
ya went a little too far at the end there. nothing wrong with not wanting to pay a subscription fee lol. its not a noble cause to pay some dude who made an app we dont need
its not a noble cause to pay some dude who made an app we dont need
Do you think professional independent developers shouldn't be paid for their work? Do you think this kind of development is effortless?
I don't understand why people keep parroting this. The app is free. It's a professionally developed app, where the quality tradeoff is either ads (which can be blocked) or your choice of ad removal payments.
This isn't some company trying to exploit the community here, this is a full time app developer who just had his livelihood completely cut off. People begged him to make a version for Lemmy, and he did. He deserves to be paid for the hours and work he put in to make it happen. You can't make an app if you can't buy food or pay rent.
And if you don't like that, then don't use it. He's never pressured users into paying, and he's never suggested everyone on Lemmy should just send him money. He isn't even spamming posts advertising the app, enthusiastic users are.
Complaining about a $20 purchase you don't have to make qualifies for "cheapskate" I think. Simply not purchasing it, or not wanting to purchase it, is fine. The difference is entitlement.
He was implementing regional pricing this morning and looks like that should be happening today and tomorrow. I think that's part of the reason so many people love Sync since the dev is ultra responsive.
As far as I've read, that price is for both no ads and Ultra which I guess gives you more perks). For just no ads it is significantly less. For no ads in my version it's $30CAD, which is a high price but is much much less than $100+CAD
No, that's lifetime ultra. A totally different thing, if you feel you need to pay more for a few extra features. You can also pay $20 to remove ads for a lifetime.
Sync for reddit was also cheaper, but the market for a reddit app is much larger than Lemmy's. We'll see how boost and others will be priced, but I expect it will be pricier than the reddit version.
The RIF dev ended up going with some non-federated reddit alternative. I get it, probably a much less flooded market (we already have so many options for Lemmy). But a bummer nonetheless.
Lol wow... Get off your high horse there. I didn't ask for Sync for Lemmy, so why should I pay for it? I'm perfectly happy with the many other free apps that are in development.
It's weird to think people are using the web app on mobile, though... Like... Why? There are so many great free options! Like, seriously... More than half a dozen!
You got the money, you do you. His hardwork have nothing to do with how much i'm willing to pay lol, the end result is what i pay for, and it's not worth the price to me.
I think this is just a reaction to the massive amount of hype we all saw yesterday.
It's a good app, but it's expensive, potentially collects your data and shares it with advertisers, and it's closed source. That's the facts of the matter so far as I can tell...
The are pros and cons here, obviously, but it's neither objectively positive or negative. With the pricetag comes unique features, like being able to tag people with notes. That's neat!
Voyager just started their TestFlight app version a few days ago and it’s really great (on iOS.) It added haptic feedback which is very nice, and fixes the freezing issue. Otherwise it’s identical, I think. I’d guess there will be an android app sometime.
I’m also testing Memmy and using Mlem - both are coming along great, but Voyager app version is the cleanest and my favorite atm.
Looking forward to trying Sync when it comes to iOS. Never tried it for Reddit - only used Apollo.
How can I get it on Testflight? I am using Mlem currently and tried Memmy a bit. For now I look at Mlem as my Lemmy-app, because the comments are well formatted compared to Memmy, but Memmy is Open Source and has definetly the the better Icon. Yes, such things are important for me, too.
Voyager has an app that respects navigation panes, UI refreshes and haptic system gestures now, so all those "but it doesn't FEEL native" complaints have been put to the ground to begin with.
Yeah i'm using pwa, and currently testing Thunder, liking it so far. Still not a good replacement if i want to do mod/admin work.
Will totally buy Sync ultra despite the bitching, but until it has mod tools and community browsing, amongst a list of missing feature found in the web app, i can't justify the spending.
Are you sure it's legit? From a quick look at the official GitHub repo's README, I saw no mention of a native Android app (however I did see mention of the iOS app).
EDIT: dug a little deeper and saw mention of the Android app in the latest release notes (beta coming soon to the play store) as well as an empty Android studio project folder in the source. Maybe the actual code is somewhere on a different branch, but even so, I would be hesitant to install random APKs not coming from the developer themself.
It's fast and it's about as native as most apps get nowadays. Kotlin on Android or Swift on iOS still run in virtual machines with GC not unlike Javascript. Nobody writes apps in C++ either. Maybe one day we will do it in Rust when there's ever a good mobile GUI framework.
Also by fast I do mean fast. Much better than any other PWA or website I've ever used and on par with good native apps. There do be some bugs, I've run into two and they're a bit annoying, but I'm sure they'll be fixed soon enough. The dev is super active and it's open source so anyone can contribute.
Much of the time you can't really tell it's not Apollo and that was the best reddit app hands down.
I do have a recent iPhone though. Maybe an older or lower end phone won't be as fast. But even so, I would still recommend trying it.
Just paying a visit to lemmy because Sync is out, and all I've seen is this. Lemmy is just another reddit, isn't it? People here are no better like what they believe themselves to be, still the same everywhere.
Its not about the app for me (although the clean interface is appreciated) just the users it'll bring with it. I like the ratio of tech literate people on Lemmy but more users means more abundant niche communities, and that was the best part of reddit for me
Yep, it's literally just another Reddit. The main benefit is that it's decentralized so it's not under the control of a single corporation, but yeah, it's mainly ex redditors on a service designed to be an alternative to Reddit
I hope that the lame jokes that were recycled for well over a year stay there, though. Certain repeated jokes were becoming just as annoying as ads.
Those "jokes" actually caused me to start blocking people, and I'll do it again if I have to lol. It was like reading the same comment over and over again, which got pretty boring.
Well so far everything on lemmy has run on the goodwill of instance owners, lemmy maintainers, and app developers working for free. Sync as far I can tell is the only thing so far to bring an openly capitalist approach to lemmy, and it depends on the free hosting that instance owners are providing. I don't have any problems with people wanting paid for their work. However, I can see how it's a little jarring to see an app charge such a subscription fee while some big instances are struggling with hosting costs and likely pulling in much less in donations.
Sync as far I can tell is the only thing so far to bring an openly capitalist approach to lemmy
Sync's pricing is inherently socialist. LJ owns his own labor and is able to decide what is done with it. If you don't want to pay then cool, there are plenty of other options.
This probably speaks a bit to the fact that reddit in itself was nothing special, and the people were making it what that is and what it ain't was before it could be.
People moved here, so we're seeing that here now. Reddit was a loss in the same way your favourite pub closing down was - ye had to find a new place.
Lemmy is in fact just another link aggregator, albeit a better one, and the app build for it is trying too hard to be reddit, with no feature that's closer to lemmy than reddit. So yes lemmy is reddit.
There's a one time $20 fee to remove ads. There's also a thing for increased functionality that's separate and includes removing ads using a monthly or an annual subscription option, and there's also a lifetime option. I opted for the lifetime one at $100 because I figure I'll be using it for a few years, I'm happy to support the dev, and I really want all the bells and whistles.
There's a one time payment for ad free. The subscription is for ultra which is ad free plus a bunch of power user type shit that I don't personally have a use for.
They have every right to use the FOSS clients if they don't want ads and don't want to pay anything. Thing is there's no reason to complain about a paid client existing. It doesn't take away choice, it adds choice. FOSS devs will want to implement features they see in paid clients and raise the bar for paid client to add more features and then repeat. That's a great thing for users. All this choice will lead to better and better clients, both FOSS and paid. What's important is that lemmy is an open platform meaning we will always have choice. More choices are a good thing.
$20 one time for a well developed app that I use multiple hours a day is inexpensive.
I pay almost as much to multiple streaming services PER MONTH for a shitty experience and sometimes not a completely ad-free experience.
Anyway, in all honesty I chose the $1.99/mo because it gives the dev $24/yr into perpetuity. I also donate to instances. I also use Connect and Jerboa and Liftoff. It's whatever.
I was always a fan of Sync, and am now on board again. That said, I thought LiftOff and Summit were the two most polished on Android. I had a few nitpicks with each, but overall they are solid.
I love Sync and it's a huge reason why I left Reddit. That said, the price to remove ads and the subscription have made me take pause instead of jumping right back in...
If it was like $15 one-time to remove ads to get the same features there were in Sync Pro I'd be all in and evangelizing the app all over. But it's more expensive than that, and now some of the features are locked behind Sync Ultra (like tagging users) which is a subscription or quite high one-time purchase...
I'm here for it as well but sticking with FOSS. However, I'll say use whatever app you want. The wonderful thing about the Fediverse is that they actually give you the option to do that!
Honestly, it's so strange this never comes up - yes there are ads but a man's gotta eat. The ads aren't particularly intrusive so the free version is a fine sacrifice for those of us who are happy enough with the base functionality of sync and can deal with the minor annoyance of an occasional ad.
I'd prefer to purchase the ad-free version, but the pricing is a bit excessive for me right now - I can wait it out until there's a sale or other discount in the meantime.
If that's a dealbreaker, all the other Lemmy clients are available to use instead - I've used them all and they're all excellent.
I'll repeat what I said in several other threads at this point:
I loved the old app, I still love the new app, it’s a pleasure to use compared to the alternatives I’ve tried, and I find the ultra subscription rate both reasonable and worthwhile to support a product I truly enjoy.
Sync is good for me. There’s plenty of other options if it’s not good for you.
I really liked Connect but it kept crashing when I got too far down my feed. I've been on Jerboa since and the last updates gave it the more polished feel like Connect has.
For either case people are free to not use the app. Surely the existence of an app that makes the Lemmy experience so much better is a good thing. This grows the Lemmy universe.
Dude, there are literally boxes that say "sponsored content" I find those annoying enough, but you don't think those are going to switch to ads soon?
I've always wondered who bought those houses on the California cliffs that were definitely going to erode into the ocean at some point. I'm getting a better idea.
look i dont got much money in the bank but people need to start donating to foss creators cause it's getting dumb, musescore sold out to ultimate guitar and theyre going to shit cause guess what? no one gave money. the linux distro im using is ome of the biggest jn the world and it barely scrapes 1000 usd a month. when i get a job i'll start giving money but people seriously need to chip in, im not mad at sync at all i get it
FOSS = principled free software without obligation because the labor was "donated."
That's what I'm learning on lemmy. It's blowing my mind.
Edit: exiting to make sure I'm understood. I get FOSS. I understand it's role. What I'm learning is there is a while corner of the internet determined not to spend money on software.
And feeling significant moral outrage if someone else does. It's bizarre. I've seen religious people less zealous.
I'm sorry but how is musescore going to shit? The online subscription is totally separate from the open source app which has had some major development lately and looks and functions amazing.
That being said I agree with your sentiment, the funding for these projects needs to be more robust.
Tantacrul is in charge of the UI/UX design now and his involvement is easily one of the best things to happen to musescore imo. It's actually super competitive to other scoring software now. Not that musescore was bad before, it was just super janky with some features. He said he's working on a redesign for audacity too which should be interesting.
Really don't get what all the fuss regarding Sync is about. There are plenty of alternatives out there, free or not. Maybe someone can explain what I'm missing?
Closed source app for an open source social media platform, and monetizing a free + open source social media platform with subscriptions and ads would be my guess. Of course we all have the choice not to use it. Infinity seems pretty good to me so far.
The way I see it, FOSS is like a public option. It's very important to provide a baseline functionally that paid apps need to exceed to be competitive. That's a great thing, but that doesn't mean it's wrong for paid apps to exist that provide a more polished experience, and if you can't afford it, the ads really aren't that intrusive, but if they annoy too much you can just use FOSS.
What's great about Lenny is that this choice cannot be taken away from us. There will always be competition both FOSS and paid because lemmy is an open platform and healthy competition is a great thing.
People have a hate boner for non-FOSS. There are no other high quality Lemmy apps. Choice is only an illusion. Now go to the app store and download your mandatory Sync app /s
People on the internet tend to latch onto memes for the hell of it. Do they really care about it? Probably not. It's just the topic of the week, like X, Threads, the Titanic, etc. I would hope that people would be a lot less harsh to the Sync developer...I doubt that the people fanning the anti-Sync flames are doing it to try and lower prices.
I don't even understand this headlong rush for an app. And especially being so desperate for an app that you'd use one that embeds ads unless you pay to remove them.
It just seems completely backwards to me.
With Reddit, it made sense - it was awful in a mobile browser, the official app was complete garbage, and either way it was buried in ads So you could (and I did) use a third party app and get a cleaner and more useful interface and no ads.
But Lemmy's already fine in a browser and it's ad-free. So what's the point?
I could maybe see, somewhere down the road when the apps are complete and established, it might be interesting to experiment with some and maybe find one that's got just the features I like most. But that's not what I'm seeing. What I'm seeing are people desperately clamoring for an app - any app - it doesn't matter how primitive and janky it is - they just desperately need to have an app right now, today, this instant. As if lemmy is completely unusable without one.
And it's just... not that way at all. Sure, it could be better, but it's fine.
A lot of us are reddit refugees that used Sync as our primary way of interacting with content. For those people (like me), Sync for Lemmy is the easiest transition from Reddit Sync, with all the controls and customization we got used to over time. I didn't even bother with Lemmy on mobile because the Fediverse multi-site experience kinda sucks and would rather have a more familiar and user-friendly experience. Maybe I'll explore other options in the future but the ad-supported free option is really not a problem for me right now.
It's kind of amusing to me because he asked us what to do and we asked him to make a lemmy app. Part of his decisionmaking is that he knows many of us are willing to reward him for what he does.
I've been using sync as long as I've used reddit. Tried all the apps for Reddit back in the day and Sync was the best. Remember being mad it wasn't FOSS I'm a dev who donates time, and mad respect for others who do too, but also respect to the dev of Sync who is providing a great service. The app is beta and it's already better than most others. It is a familiar experience.
I had no preconceived notions, never used Sync for Reddit. Just thought it was a nice app and a good experience. I was happy to throw the guy $16 for a year of premium, and if I'm still using it in a year I'll buy the life pass. It's not because there are no alternatives, it's because it's worth the money when it's going to a small dev team.
I just started trying out Sync today and I gotta admit, it is way better than the Lemmy apps I've tried or the website. It just feels more... Professional? And intuitive, easy to usev with more functionality quickly available.
Sync user here. It's an easier switch from reddit to lemmy bc of the familiar ux. That's about it!
I'm sure that the other apps are probably just as nice, this is just more recognizable and easy to navigate 'cause i was using Sync for reddit for so long
When I came over being a former BaconReader user I too started using Jerboa. It's pretty good except for the lack of options. I find the swipe gestures too sensitive for my use and I can only turn that off in Sync. So off to Sync I've gone.
The thing is... if it was the ONLY GOOD choice or even just the best choice, I would be willing to buy it. It just isn't though. There are so many FOSS options already. There will be better and cheaper paid closed source options in the future as well.
It is quite a weird thread. I'm seeing a lot of people saying Sync is the best, and honestly, it might be, but the logic that the others are outright bad doesn't fly. The only app that is outright bad is Jerboa, and the only reason to use Jerboa was if you were on here since BEFORE reddit even started the API thing, when it was the only option. We have a TON of options right now. Everyone actually focusing on Jerboa feels like they're not an actual Lemmy user.
I've downloaded all the available Lemmy apps I could find
They all work better than the official Reddit app. I know it's a low bar to clear, but some of them have barely been out for two months and are in alpha/beta stages.
The only big issues I've run into are instance related because of those asshole ddos'ers
Here I am on jerboa wondering why it barely gets mentioned lol. It was all that was available in the first wave of migration and im used to it now. Sorta how I ended up on baconreader. Someone told me to try it, I had not used a 3rd party app before then (reddit didnt even have one at the time, the one they have now is steaming trash) and I got used to it and never looked for another. Until Jerboa isn't doing what I need/want or begins to have functionality problems, I dont feel a need to change
Tbh, I don't particularly enjoy the way it looks and when I used it there were a few quality of life things, like hiding read items. But could've changed now
I think the bigger issue is that you can't afford a $20 one time fee for a highly polished app that will get a massive amount of usage. I know it's a tough economy but $20 isn't a crazy amount of money.
I was using it but switched to sync. It just seems so much better to me. I assume a lot of it has to do with familiarity, but man the UX just seems so tight to me too.
I'm pro sync too! I bought reddit sync pro and love it, to the point of quitting reddit when they shut down 3rd party app.
The web app have some issue(well, a lot) but it also have a lot of feature currently not available on all the app i've tried, so i still prefer it over any app.
Fwiw, I've been using the free version of Sync since yesterday and still haven't seen a single ad. But also, it's like they just aren't live yet because I do see an occasional empty box with "sponsored content" labeled in the center.
I've been using it and I haven't seen a single ad and it seems fine? I feel like there isn't an in-between of hating it and loving it more than life itself.
Are ads just not working yet or something? I don't see a reason to even pay unless you want to support him, which is totally fine to do.
Pricing according to purchasing power parity is a must. People keep clamouring about how its just a price of coffee/beer when the entire argument is baseless.
How does PPP relate in this scenario? The price of the goods (in this case Sync) is the same wherever in the world it is available and whatever currency it is offered in, no?
No. Google doesn't automatically prices the apps in accordance to purchasing power parity. Many devs are not even aware of this. The setting is available for the devs and only some of them change the pricing according to how it should be for that particular region.
Wow. What a dumbass comment. :D
I hope the lines of insulin makers are not seeing the evidence of lack of brains right here. Else they will never get the things done right.
I don't see your companies not making a beeline for the Asian labor. If you cannot comprehend that purchasing power parity is a concept well rooted and not a route to present the begging bowl, you ought to spend sometime reading or amongst learned people.
It takes a while but once you get there it can really be chef's kiss.
I loved Sync for Reddit and the API bullshit is why I largely left, but the pricing and ad injection has really rubbed me the wrong way.
I mean, I get why, but I don't like the specifics of the execution. I would have paid $5-10 for a pro version that really only added minor features just because I like the app...but I refuse to do a subscription model, and the one time option is basically "pay me or else you have to deal with this negative experience". Basically I just feel like I'm being hit up to pay a protection fee, albeit in a mild sense.
Currently I'm taking a wait and see approach with Sync. If changes are made... Like reducing that one time fee to eliminate the ads that are, well...added...then I very likely would pay a $5-10 app price.
If not, I'll probably use the plain version until I find a free FOSS alternative I like as much or more...but currently Jerboa has just totally bugged out on me for the last time, and Liftoff is okay but still buggy and still not the most intuitive UI.
I actually have no good enough reason to switch to an app, the web app is more than good although text formatting doesn't work probably using Firefox but it works using nu.lemdro.id which lacks the option to easily use and format text
I went through this early on with Jerboa. I found clearing my app cache early on fixed it again after a specific update broke my ability to stay logged in.
As a layman I've read once a app gets updated the data in cache for the last version isn't really suitable so it become unused and more data is added to the cache. Sometimes this can be a issue. There are apps that can help clear caches after major updates to Android. It helped clean my phone up overall too.
i really appreciate the vibrant healthy competition considering where we are on the growth curve. is there a feature comparison spreadsheet somewhere? what features should there be in a year?
I'm using the same thing and love it. However I can never find the subscription button. Am I missing it somewhere obvious? I always have to switch back to subscribe
I am new to both Lemmy and the fediverse. Today is my second day using Memmy. It feels similar enough to Narwhal, which I was using for Reddit. I have not had any glaring “ooh, I don’t like this at all” moments. Which is a big deal because I’m a user interface engineer. UI stuff bothers me all the damn time.
On one hand, Sync fanboi keep saying "if you don't like it you can pick other app", on another hand when someone said they like other app, they get downvoted lol. Reddit is weird.
I'm generally not a cheap ass when it comes to apps I use a lot, but it's kinda crazy compared to a full blown music production app like FL Studio Mobile that costs $15. If it were under $10 I doubt many would be complaining. Just my honest opinion.
A fair opinion. However, FL studio mobile has a lot larger potential customers to sell to, which mean they can afford to set their unit price pretty low. Right now it has 500,000 downloads. Compare that to sync for Lemmy. Monthly active users of Lemmy is only around 100,000 users, less than total download of FL studio. Out of those 100,000 users, only a handful of them willing to buy a Lemmy app, even at $3. So the dev have no choice to increase the unit price accordingly to cover their cost.
That being said, the devs said he'll reduce the price as the number of active Lemmy users grow.
FL studio will always make the most of their money through the desktop version. FL can afford to make a little less money on their mobile app especially considering that it's likely a gateway for a lot of people to purchase the full version. Sync is a bit different in that regard. There's also much less of a market for lemmy readers.
3rd-party Reddit app devs: "Reddit is so greedy! We're leaving! ... Hey guys, pay me $17 per year for a gateway to a free service that I have nothing to do with! ... Too high? Fine! Pay me $20 for the portal for the free service if you want it without ads!
Couldn't be more obvious you have no clue how much work app development and support are.
Everyone's free to use whatever they want. Not sure why it's necessary to shame a one-man dev team that spends countless personal hours to make an excellent product, for needing some income for doing so.
$17 for all the extra feature is not high imo. $20 for basic app is, it makes the subscription model much more appealing and i bet that's what he's going for.
You spoke as if Sync is the only way to access Lemmy, which is not the case. People who find value on Sync will pay it, and people who don't won't buy it. No one is forced to pay for the app against their will.