Sync Ultra is a very reasonable $17 a YEAR. YouTube Premium is reaching that per MONTH. I have sync downloaded and it was the first thing I did. Thanks lj for the beautiful app.
[EDIT: That was a poor comparison, as pointed out in the comments. Leaving it for discussion sake.
There are many counterpoints and actually good discussion happening down below. Even if you don’t agree, thanks for showing me a different perspective!
If you want to support Sync, make sure to support the Lemmy Devs and your instance holders as well!
*This post was made early in the day before the update added the OTP option.]
What’s more infuriating is that Lemmy itself doesn’t have ads but Sync has, sadly.
I understand, but the dev works on this app full time so he has to earn a living somehow. Even the core Lemmy devs are able to work on Lemmy full time because they got some funding from a grant.
In my recollection sync for reddit had multiple long gaps in communication from the dev, including pretty shortly after subscriptions were first announced. I appreciate the desire to be paid, but I didn’t find it clear that there were ongoing development or support efforts.
I mean i agree the dev should be paid for the work. But it just seems a bit odd to require a subscription to remove ads using a service that does not have ads or backend cost from a api. I think there should be no ads or at the very least a one time purchase to remove just ads. Like I understand a subscription for like power user features. And i am not some cheap ass complaining I have probably given the dev 100+ dollars in support between patreon, ultra subscription, ultra lifetime purchases.
I’ll admit to being a bit confused because I’ve been using sync for a couple of hours now and have yet to see an ad myself.
I’ve noticed that no ads are shown when you disable all tracking and reject cookies. Might be EU only though.
Yeah, I’m not too happy about that. I’ll give this a few days, at least, but I can’t stand ads. It never occurred to me that they would be brought in for a platform that otherwise has none. I paid for a lifetime subscription on Sync for Reddit. For Lemmy, Connect is close enough to the Sync experience that I’m about to say fuck this and go back to it.
It still takes dev time, and that’s expensive, and this is the beta implementation. Lj said he plans to add the lifetime option, but for this first release, he did not include it as he wanted to see how lemmy held up first. If this all died out in a couple weeks after the api changes from reddit, it would have been pointless. This allows for those of us who want to support the development now to enable him to focus full time. With thousands of users vs. the millions reddit had having a dollar purchase to remove ads, it just wouldn’t scale right now to make this a feasible full-time project.
The problem is how apps are bought on mobile now.
With PC applications, you’d buy a specific version and you would maybe get updates for a year. Then the developer would release an update and you would decide whether it was worth buying the update for the new enhancements. If it wasn’t then you’d stick with the old version until the next new version and make the choice again. This way the developer gets paid regularly by new and existing users if they produce a good app.
On mobile, you buy an app and expect to get updates for the life of the app. The developer is expected to keep producing updates whether the app is complete or not otherwise their app is labelled as dead. They only get paid by new users.
That second model is simply not sustainable from the developer’s point of view for any reasonably sized app so they need to think of ways to make it work. There are only two options which are ads and subscriptions and people don’t like either.
Of course, PC apps are also moving to subscriptions to remove the option that you used to have to not pay them for a year or two if they’re not providing good enough updates.
https://lemm.ee/comment/1774742
Guys, chill. It’s just the first public beta. At least give a man a few weeks to iron things out. Geez.
Everything is a subscription because users demand their software be updated on a consistent basis. That’s the nature of software development.
