I legitimately could not get into Lemmy with any of the other apps. They just all felt wrong.
But I used Lemmy more on the first day the app came out than I did since I made my account two months ago. Best part is it feels just like Sync for Reddit did, including all the great features.
The only reason I haven’t paid yet for no ads is that I’m waiting to see how much I like it. I might even pay for Ultra if they provide a discount for buying it with the Reddit app.
As a former Reddit user of sync pro. I’m one of those people who just enjoys the UI so much that I’m willing to support the dev. It’s easy to say “pay for it” to make it look worse, but I appreciate the work he’s put into it.
I agree, there is nothing wrong with getting paid for your work. It is a high quality app which should be appreciated by the lemmy community since it helps them grow.
Corporations are also people making a living. LJ is effectively a one-man company at this point and you can feel free to keep defending his business decisions as much as you want, just be sure you’re aware of it.
If Apollo for Lemmy came out with a similar pricing structure I would probably jump on it. At least the $20 part.
Apollo was my most used app on iOS. Sync was my most used on Android. I’m okay with paying the developers who make a product I love.
I’m not telling anyone else to do so, I’m not saying you need to. The existing FOSS apps are great. Do what you like, and let others do what they like. It isn’t hurting anyone.
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.
It’s so weird how it DOES seem expensive for an app feature. But like you said in the grand scheme it’s actually incredibly cheap. It’s a meal at McDs!
A lot of apps charge money for barely anything at all, but in sync’s case, think how much you use the app. I expect to get a ton of value out of lemmy clients.
Here’s the thing. I don’t know if it will get a massive amount of usage. Lemmy is fine right now but not having the userbase that reddit has is brutal. I want to talk sports with people but all the sports communities are dead. If I look at an Orioles community the game threads have 12 comments all by bots giving pitching/scoring updates.
Give it time. What’s important is that lemmy has hit critical mass and has many great clients that are far better than the Reddit ones. It will grow and not shrink. It’s the long game, doesn’t matter that it’s not big enough to support sports communities yet, it will get there and it’s still very early days on this platform.
Lemmy is already significantly more active than when I first joined, and that was only 2 months ago.
The most I’ve ever paid for an app is $15 for a highly-featured launcher that is now literally the core element of my phone use. This pricing just does not make sense when compared to the rest of the Android ecosystem.
Additionally, I don’t know if I would call it “highly polished.” I’d say it looks fine and browsing feels, well, like browsing, but I used it for a couple days and comments seemed to be totally bugged. They were appearing out of order, disappearing seemingly randomly and I think some where even attaching to the wrong parents, because there were things I was reading that just didn’t make any sense.
It’s 22€ (24.50 USD) here. To the commenter who said that’s “one MacDonald,'s meal”, every single large McMenu here is under 10€. With the usual coupons, you’re looking at the cost of McDonald’s for my entire family, not just one meal.
I can still, comfortably, afford blowing that much money on an app. But it doesn’t even get me any of the many “Ultra” features (that’s 110€). Looking at the Ultra page, ljdawson has already made clear that almost all planned Lemmy quality of life features will be pay-gated.
It’s also a huge gamble: we have no idea how financially viable Sync will be in a much smaller and far more hostile to non-FOSS apps, community. Heck, I opted out of tracking (like most EU-members of Lemmy would have) and the app isn’t even loading any ads at all, the revenue generated for ljdawson is zero.
Ljdawson has already suspended development of the original Reddit client on at least one occasion even though it was massively successful. Don’t think for a second he won’t cut his losses and run if he doesn’t consider the Lemmy client a financial success. The “lifetime” purchase might buy you another 10 years of maintained and polished usage, it might buy you six months. It’s a gamble.
Instead of blowing the cost of a small (McDonald’s) or a large (Amusement Park) family outing on my second-favorite former Reddit client, I’m waiting for Boost to come out, with hopefully slightly more sensible pricing.
I reckon since he mentioned the lack of regional pricing, he’s probably from a developing country where 20 USD is a crazy amount of money for a Lemmy app. Whatever “side” you’re on, I think regional pricing is an extremely reasonable request.
It’s $20 to remove ads permanently. You can still use it for free with ads. For me I see a small box ad every 20 or so posts. I don’t personally find it intrusive. I plan to pay for one of the high polish apps after a few more come out and I find the one I like best. $20 once is completely worth it for the value I get out of it.
Even if you don’t find it intrusive, it is. Ads are incredibly powerful, that’s why they pay good money to get them in front of you through any means possible.
A month from now you are going to look around and think to yourself, “damn, why did I buy so much of this sponsored content? I don’t need this much sponsored content”
I think it may be a bug, but I have not seen a single ad so far. There’s not even a spot for ads to appear. I had Sync Pro on Reddit so it has been the exact same experience I had on that
It would be awesome if it did haha, I paid $2 for Sync way back in 2014 and used it nonstop, but I think that I’ve seen that Sync for Lemmy was going to be, for all intents and purposes, entirely separated from Sync for Refdit
well I’m testing like 5 6 apps for lemmy rn. I’ll settle with one maybe after a year or two when everything settles down. rn I’ll say sync ui is fluid and rich but still incomplete. infinity felt better than reddit client which I’ll completely agree with you.
i just tested these apps and I’ll say connect works really better for replying to comments. all those apps just showed me what was the reply not the parent thread. which is quite frustrating also.
Edit: tested this on summit also works really good for context rest of those apps need to improve inbox section. without context i can’t just reply to a comment.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think the point of the person you replied to is that it doesn’t make sense to use PPP for pricing. The dev charges x. They live from the money made paying the app. Just because a user lives somewhere where PPP is lower doesn’t change the developers costs.
And i will tell you that a good number of devs have indeed reduced the pricing when I have pointed out the anomaly… Including a very relevant app developer.
The basics of business is to sell the commodity enough to make profit on the investment. If you have enough buyers, you can lower the pricing. Else somebody else struts out and steals the potential user base, the exorbitant pricing strategy for a considerable user base will come down to a naught.
That is the entire crux of the argument. And thank God that the 80-85% of the devs don’t feel averse to the entire concept of purchasing power parity.
If you haven’t dabbled in activities/studies as to how one can reduce the value factor while relying on the volume to not only start making some profit BUT ALSO ensuring the ‘first mover’s advantage’, this will be a long drawn and possibly a futile discussion. I have said what was required, while having first hand experience of interacting with the devs who agreed, so that is it from my side. Ciao.
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.
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