Don’t let anyone pressure you into trying (or not trying) different apps if you have one you like. Sync happens to be the one that resonated with me the most, but other people won’t feel the same.
Is there a FOSS app that has the *peeking"-feature? (Long pressing a picture to get full size preview) That feature has been an absolute game changer to me.
Sync for Lemmy is built by the same guy that built sync for Reddit. Built using seemingly a lot of the same code.
I bounced between all the open source apps and have started using sync for Lemmy because it’s familiar and it works. It also seems to be much faster than the others, maybe due to more aggressive caching/prefetching? Or that could be a placebo effect.
I was always having weird issues with jebora and the rest of them, and was not a fan of Voyager’s interface.
I might try connect, jebora, etc again a bit later. Might also purchase the one time and remove for sync, might donate to Lemmy instances, etc.
For now I’m just glad to have a familiar interface.
I’ve tried pretty much all the FOSS Lemmy apps I could get my hands on but the experience Sync provides is far superior. I’m an ex Boost user and since I couldn’t find Boost for Lemmy I naturally gravitated towards Sync and I’m not looking back.
Yeah, that’s what I’ve been waiting for. But with Sync ready and so many other free options, I’m worried that by the time it comes out, I’ll already have transitioned to something else. Have you heard anything about an ETA for the app?
I installed both Sync and Infinity on the same day and I’ve mostly used Infinity since, I just don’t get the fuss about Sync, I think it’s only nostalgia from its Reddit users tbh (I used Boost for Reddit fwiw).
I’m currently jumping between Memmy, Bean, Lemmios and Avelon. Dropped Thunder, Liftoff, Olympus and Lemmotif. There’s actually a lot of options going around, not to mention the several other WPAs being developed too.
This discourse in these comments is stupid. People can complain about Sync if they have something to complain about. It’s a fucking forum. Personally I hate the idea of restricting features and using ads to get people to pay, especially when I have several FOSS apps that work perfectly for me, I don’t think Sync feels any more “slick”.
There, that’s my opinion. I don’t like Sync and I’m not attacking anyone for using it.
I fully agree! I have no idea why would I need to pay $20 for an app when I have a bunch of alternatives that I like even more. Welp, I even like to use a browser instead of an app sometimes. But people are excited and are going to Lemmy, which is a good thing
Damn I loved Sync for reddit. Paid like $3 for the pro version, removing ads. Not sure I can make myself pay $20 though. Something like $5-$8 would be more reasonable.
Not sure if you have tried voyager yet, but it has been great for me. It’s a PWA, so you can install it to your phone homescreen from the browser. All of the kinks seem to be pretty ironed out by now.
Completely ad free and monetarily free, as well.
To be fair, though, I never used sync. I used RIF for reddit, and I haven’t missed it since I found Voyager.
I hear you but I also paid like $3-5 for pro and used it daily for years. It probably works out to pennies per month if you do the math. I don’t get the sense LJDawson is lighting cigars with $100 bills. With the old model he got paid the price of a coffee… once. I’d imagine that a subscription model at least guarantees him a somewhat regular income stream that hopefully helps beyond beer money every so often
That my outlook on it. I bought the pro version in like 2013 for 4 or 5 bucks. Didn’t give him a penny again until ultra came out and I got the monthly on that for a grand total of like $20. I can see why it may be a turn off for new users but for me it’s just paying back what I already got from LJ.
As a Sync user, I support this comment. The fact that these debates occur is precisely due to the fact that people have the freedom of choice, and that’s something to celebrate.
Sync doesn’t have to be “better” or “worse” than other apps and vice versa. People should pick what they like. I pick it because it feels like home after having used it for almost 10 years. Doesn’t mean it’s better.
I get complaining about the price, I get being a FOSS diehard, but there are are a handful of accounts that are so insanely mad about Sync and commenting/posting about it so much that they genuinely can’t be mentally well.
Not really. The alternative is charging for the app in the first place, but if you do that your app fails. You include ads to help pay for development and ongoing expenses.
Offering a subscription to remove them for those that want to is secondary to that. Very few people actually subscribe to anything at all unless they absolutely have to. You’d be surprised to learn how few users actually pay to remove ads–like oftentimes less than one percent
Donations work. The dev clearly has many loyal fans willing to pay. Look at Jerboa/Lemmy’s donation pages. It’s good money.
Besides this I’m not even saying the dev shouldn’t do it. I’m just explaining that I don’t like it.
I gladly donate to FOSS software devs because the product never forces me to log in for a feature or get a key or see an ad. The app doesn’t get any of the bloat required to do that stuff either. I just don’t want to use Sync and it’s not because I’m cheap
The Lemmy dev is making around 30k a year. Subtract taxes from that and he’s making maybe 25k (at best).
They’re very clearly extremely talented software engineers, and you’re telling me $12 an hour is “good money”? That’s not even above minimum wage in many US states! Do you have any idea how much software engineers make?
Which open source app do you feel is just as slick as sync? Genuine question. I’d be happy to support a FOSS app, but all that I found had weird issues and quirks, and/or janky UI. Liftoff was the best I’d found but again, buggy and janky.
One of my issues with Lemmy so far is how meta it is.
Reddit is often meta, sure, but 60% of the content I’m seeing here (while browsing Everything) is about how much better Lemmy is or whatever app people are using to access it. Let’s get back to shitposting, articles, and memes please. I want this platform to work and I don’t think it will if this content continues.
Your problem is browsing Everything. There’s a lot of content on Lemmy that isn’t meta-posting - you just need to curate your own feed, like on Reddit.
Thanks. On reddit when I was bored of my frontpage I’d go on /r/all to check out other subs and maybe subscribe if I liked the content. That has been my strat here and it isn’t panning out so far. Looks like I gotta change it up.
Thanks for this. Now I just have to hope some of the communities I briefly looked through like the history related ones don’t suffer from usdefaultism. It seems like meta and defaultism kills all interests for me.
Lemmy is still fairly new to most people here and most of these new people came from reddit. A group of people who majorly are having a single, shared, novel experience (moving from reddit to Lemmy) are gonna talk about that thing until it stops being novel.
It’s already getting considerably less meta so I’d just enjoy it for what it is, contribute content to the communities you like, and just allow the meta conversations to naturally subside.
If I like it better then who are you to tell me I shouldn’t pay for it. Like it doesn’t affect you, as long as I support my home instance everything will be fine.
It’s your phone, do what you want with it. Funny that in the weeks leading up I saw so much love for Sync and the instant it dropped there was a massive shift. Maybe because of the Play Store privacy section? Lemmy is every bit as vulnerable to bandwagoning as Reddit. In a week nobody will be talking about it.
Only way to remove ads at launch was the ultra subscription ($2/mo or $17/yr)
Once a one-time payment for ad removal (not ultra) was added, it cost $20 which is higher than people were expecting. It started out cheaper and rose once or twice throughout the day.
The one-time payment for “ultra” as added late in the day and costs $99 (the Sync for Reddit version was $30)
I’m personally torn because I really like Sync and I believe the dev should be paid for their work. IMO Sync is far and away the best app for Lemmy at the moment, and it very likely always will be.
The problem is $99 for an app is very steep. If that’s the price that makes it worth the dev effort and lower userbase, so be it, but that doesn’t make it any less expensive.
There are lots of FOSS lemmy apps out there with dedicated developers that are ad and tracker free (shoutout to Connect). They aren’t as polished as Sync. However, almost all of them have only been around for a month and have seen an astonishing amount of improvements in that time. Who’s to say they won’t eventually match/beat Sync?
Speaking for myself, it feels weird to be forking $99 over to Sync for porting their app over from Reddit when I’ve never donated to any instances, any other 3rd-party lemmy apps, or to lemmy development itself. I’ll probably donate to those things eventually, but paying $99 for Sync before giving money to those other parts of the lemmy ecosystem just feels out of order.
I’m holding out to see if the one time payment for Ultra drops in price. In the meantime, my adblocker (dns66) makes it so I don’t see any ads anyway.
It’s not $99 for the app though, it’s $20 for sync ad-free, which is reasonable for a crazy polished app like this one. The $99 gets you a tiny bit more functionality they provide extra based around a subscription model because recurring revenue makes sure you always have the funds to further your project. I don’t necessarily agree with this sentiment, but I also don’t need any of those extra features.
Also, sync is just the beginning. Many more apps will follow. If they still think that price is reasonable, then so be it. But $20 is very fair IMO.
On Reddit, Sync Ultra was able to restore deleted comments and translate posts/comments in app.
I hate subscriptions as much as the next one, but I have never used Reddit, only Sync, and it is such a polished app, so I’m paying 3$ a month to keep ljdawson developing it to be even better.
So the money also goes towards keeping the developer interested and invested in his app.
I know plenty of free alternatives exists, and as of now you aren’t getting anything for your money that you couldn’t get elsewhere for free, but as of now I am loving having sync back.
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