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.
Voyager is fantastic IMO. wefwef.app , it is a web app, it will even put am icon for itself on your phone so it feels just like a regular app. Works really great, and is really fast.
Voyager is also available at m.lemmy.world since I see you are using lemmy.world
Interesting, I had no idea, thanks!
What do you mean? Is there a distinction between lemmy.world and m.lemmy.world?
m.lemmy.world host a voyager instance preconfigured to load posts from lemmy.world.
It's also available in the Android Play Store and will be on the iOS App Store soon.
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.
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
It really shouldβve been $50 for Lifetime, at most.
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.
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.
Summit.
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 struck a nerve/peeve as of late. 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).
doing so will result in losing the remaining 30%
That's a farce; it happens all the time, revenue stops increasing from growing the customer base, so the prices are raised on the existing customer base to cover costs and keep things operational. Why do you think Netflix still isn't $8.99, and password sharing is no longer permitted?
If you definitely know you can't make enough money on 30% of 1,000,000 people, but you can make enough money charging 10% of 1,000,000 people a higher rate, you're going to do that ... because it's your only option. There are diminishing returns to picking up new customers with lower prices.
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.
Given how much time I spent on Sync with Reddit, I imagine the ultra one-time price ($99) will end up being a dollar per hour in a few months and just go down from there.
A dollar per hour for entertainment is generally a good deal to me.
Why do you think $15-30 is too much for an app on your phone? Just because it's an app doesn't mean that its value is inherently less.
I use Lemmy way more on mobile so I didn't have a problem paying for the better experience. Curious to hear your thoughts.
Not the person you replied to but I don't evaluate app prices in a vacuum. First I think of what paying actually gets me (e.g. no ads), then I consider how it compares to alternatives both free and paid. A paid app has to provide some value over a free app and an expensive app has to provide some value over cheaper apps. Furthermore if an app is priced such that I can buy 3-4 other apps while also being more expensive than any individual apps I've previously purchased then it gives me some pause.
I think that asking to be paid for your work is totally fine (albeit I myself made my lemmy app completely free and opensource, simply because its just my hobby project), 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