Lol! The choice is ads or a SUBSCRIPTION!?
My friend, we know other 3rd party Reddit app developers are working as fast as they can to make lemmy apps. One of them is bound to have a one-time pro version upgrade. I’ll hold out for that.
LMAO … Subscriptions. Why on earth do you think we left Reddit?!
I left Reddit because Spez is an asshole and he killed third-party API access (which, btw, impacted more than just clients - many useful bots/scripts died too as a result of this change).
For many of us, Sync was Reddit, and killing Sync basically killed Reddit for us, but now that Sync is back (for Lemmy), many of us are more than happy to pay a subscription to support the dev, instead of supporting Reddit. ljdawson is an awesome developer who actually listens to his users and updates his apps regularly. If you don’t want to support him and/or use a different app, that’s your call of course, but for fans of Sync, it’s like coming back home after a long time and getting that feeling of “there’s no place like home”.
It’s certainly a nice app, but I’ve also grown attached to Connect over these last few weeks. I even donated to the dev, which is something my stingy ass never does.
While I loved Sync, I’m not paying $20/yr for any social media. If I recall, Sync Pro for Reddit was something like $5-6 lifetime. I’d pay that again without blinking an eye.
I was on Reddit for 13 years, and bought the pro version every app ever made for the platform (sync, RiF, bacon reader, boost, Apollo, Joey, etc, etc.). Sync was … fine. But in no way was it a stand out. RiF had them all beat by a mile for nearly a decade, then Joey elbowed them out in the last few years.
Anyway, I’d have been happy to buy sync Pro for lemmy, but a subscription is bonkers when there are free alternatives.
Dev has to somehow pay their bills. And for continuous support they need some kind of reward for their time and effort. Eventually other apps will be moved to subscription or they will just stop updating. These apps will still run because of ad support or subscription. Ads are actually non intrusive.
The issue people have with Sync is the model going against the philosophy of Lemmy and the fediverse.
People aren’t mad at paying for the app if it was a one time payment.
there will be a separate in app purchase structure
the ultra subscription was a separate sub model from sync for reddit that was on the side to help support the 1 developer who works on the app if you want to. the model was already there and nothing has changed from reddit, so it was probably easy to leave the code in with the same features and keep it in.
you also need to realize this is a beta as well so it’s not “officially” released yet. if sync for reddit is anything to go by, once LJ is content on the app it will be released in full, with additional pro / dev variants to come. but since those are considered separate apps, those won’t come until later since they need to be reviewed and put on the app store… which makes sense there’s only 1 variant at this time
edit: pro model won’t happen due to Google play store policies on duplicate apps. one time in app purchase is coming
Sounds like pro will not be a separate app and will only be unlocked with an in-app purchase due to Google Play policies around ‘duplicate’ apps.
I disagree. I think there’s a lot of people living in a fantasy. Things cost money. You can’t rely on good will to pay for developers, engineers, and hardware.
Maybe ads aren’t the way to go but you’re not being realistic if you want this place to grow without some kind of funding.
Voyager is the way to go. It doesn’t even feel like it’s “just” a WebApp.
I respect your opinion. For me it was super clunky. I tried every app for lemmy. The best one is sync for now. If there is a proper competition it will be boost for lemmy.
I haven’t checked out Thunder yet! I’m amazed at how fast apps for Lemmy started showing up after the whole Reddit API fiasco!
None of the other lemmy apps I’ve used have quite felt right, though I think voyager was the best of the ones I tried in terms of ease of use. I really liked sync for reddit, so I’m hoping I’ll like the lemmy version too. I generally try to avoid subscriptions, but if I like the app and they offer a one time payment to be ad free at some point then I’m fine with that. Tbh so far I haven’t actually seen any ads though so if they’re not obtrusive then they won’t bother me. Devs gotta put food on the table somehow.
I just started testing it out and I gotta say, Sync for Lemmy is absolutely beautiful!
I’d buy it in a heartbeat if it offered a one time option!
