this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Sync for Lemmy
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As much fun as Sync is (and while I appreciate creators want to get paid)...
We're talking like $15-30(!). That's steep for a phone app. All this money stuff is pushing me back to Connect and Jerboa.
I wish Sync well. But I think I'm done with it already.
Ditto. I used to be a big Sync fan and used it for years as my primary mobile client for Reddit until 8-10 months or so ago when the dev did a 'fuck off and be unable to be contacted while something in the app breaks' break, which led to a bunch of ads appearing despite paying for no ads (and according to people on the subreddit at the time it was not a one time occurrence lol). I switched that day to Boost and didn't go back, but I was looking forward to trying out Sync for Lemmy when it released.
All the privacy and pricing concerns the last 24 hours have brought forth does not make me wanna even touch the app lol. I'm not paying that much money to fucking browse a glorified forum on my phone (specially when there's many other options).
Try Liftoff and Thunder, I find them vastly superior; they are FOSS and available for both Android and iOS.
They are okay and did the job until Sync came out. But are no way near as polished as Sync, which has years of updates and development.
Summit.
Yeah I've been using a lot of the available apps and while I had my favorites (Summit and Liftoff) there has always been little quirks that I've just been dealing with. The moment Sync hit my device it's like I'm back to my reddit experience for the last decade. I'll still keep an eye on the other apps, because I very much prefer and try to support open source developers. But I just can't force a subpar experience on myself.
The Summit dev has been extremely responsive and has added in a few features I requested on a quick turnaround. They also happen to be out of town on a work trip this week so the timing probably sucks for them. And as I'm typing this I'm remembering that ones not even open source π€¦ββοΈ.
It's not open source, but it's also not spyware or adware.
I'll just wait, they are usable enough. If you want the Lemmy experience to improve, donate $5 or $20 for Lemmy (in-browser) UI development, which is still default for most devices and it very much sucks. (Part of it is lack of support for anything like cross-domain cookies in browser technology that would store what your home instance is so that you would be always redirected to browse from home but even without it there are problems.)
I like Sync so no thank you
Okay, I wonβt push you from Sync. But if you have the money to remove its ads, please also consider supporting Lemmy directly or indirectly (Mozilla, among other things, funded the effort to find and patch TootRoot before it became a problem). If you donβt want to just donate, switching to Mozilla VPN will also help.
While liftoff was the only third party I liked, I still think it was pretty unimpressive. It ran ok and that's about it. Features were lacking, aesthetics are bad, some glitches. For me the $20 or whatever it is for sync is worth it. I've used reddit since 2012 and browsed exclusively on my phone, swapping between relay and sync. If you average that cost out, even considering the $5 or whatever it was to get rid of ads on Reddit, it's basically nothing. The usage tracking is pretty shitty though.
EDIT: Ok I just saw the lifetime price for ultra, damn wtf lol. Again, averaging that cost over the ten years I've used the app means it's still a good deal but fuck upfront that's a lot lmao
Yes.
There are a lot of other apps for Lemmy. Some are not as polished as Sync -- but some are. And none (that I know of, on Android) are ad supported. Most are open source and 100% free.
This is a money grab. People were so excited for Sync that they don't want to call it a money grab. But that's what it is.
π it's a small dev, who got shut out of the previous customer base they'd built up, and now has to rebuild with fewer customers (and fewer potential customers at least short term).
If your job lost 70% of its customers, I bet you'd be begging your boss to raise prices to avoid a 70% pay cut.
It's not a money grab. It drives me crazy how much stuff people say is a "money grab", "theft", "a scam", "predatory", etc. Asking for money isn't malicious, neither is asking for more money than you personally think is reasonable/makes sense for your finances, and neither is offering a freemium ad supported app (which is better than nothing if you're not willing to pay with money).
Edit: and sorry if that sounds overly aggressive, but you definitely stretch a nerve/peeve as of recently. It just seems like everyone wants to be as dramatic as possible lately.
I see your point. And you don't deserve to be down voted, as it's reasonable.
I do think he's pricing it a bit steep for what the market can bear. Maybe not. I hope he gets as much as possible. I just know that I am priced out and will continue to use Connect.
I'm sorry to hear that you're priced out, and I think it's fine to give pricing feedback like that. I just am sick of everything being "outrage" where someone "dares" to try to make some money in exchange for their effort.
I both wish you a better financial situation and that a shorter term compromise arrives where you can afford the app, or that you continue to be satisfied with Connect. One of the beauties of the fediverse is that it's not an all or nothing thing, there are other clients and other ways to support folks and the community (even just being a friendly person, so props there).
I agree. While $20 could still be seen as reasonable - even though making it one of the more expensive apps, thigh I'm willing to go for it if Sync continues development -, the asking price of $100 for the lifetime ultra is insane. I'm not aware of any other app that is this expensive. Of course, you could argue there's subscription apps out there that don't even have a lifetime model - e.g. Adobe, Microsoft Office -, But these provide considerably more value as well and are huge corporations.
My feeling is - and I don't have facts to prove it - that the developers of the large reddit apps (esp. Apollo) simply became used to the money making machine and want to squeeze as much as possible out of it.
While in the end it is entirely up to them, as there's open source and free alternatives out there, I'm not too fond of this behavior.
I think that asking to be paid for your work is totally fine, but its a rather different story when you provide app for open source, nonprofit venture-free platform and start to inject ads and trackers into it. Its goes against the entire idea of free decentralised platform and makes it closer to profit-focused app like reddit/threads/etc imo