bluejay

I get that. A lot of the differences are only going to be evident as you continue to use the app. If you're already set with Thunder then that's great and I'd encourage you to donate to the dev.

If the ads in Sync aren't an immediate turn off/deal breaker I'd also highly encourage you to give it a real shot over a week or so. There's a bunch of customization options to tweak it just how you like and the app runs smooth as butter, for me anyway. The app was super popular on Reddit for a reason.

It seems we have some fundamental differences in opinion here. I don't think it's pissing in anybody's face for a full time dev to make money off a free offering of their product. The app has never had ads for me since I block them at the DNS level. I still paid for it to support an app that's going to dominate my screen on time just like it did on Reddit.

Like you said, the rest of the apps don't currently have ads. A lot of their devs also said they'd never have them. That's great for them. I don't how many of them do this at a full time job either. Or how long they'll continue to support their apps under their current models (aside from Jerboa which is developed by one of the Lemmy devs)

It would be great if Sync could rely only on donos, but the amount of people bitching about a one time $20 purchase being too expensive or expecting to transfer their $1 purchase of Sync for Reddit 9 years ago to Lemmy has me thinking that's just a pipe dream.

If it's not worth it to you go ahead and use a different app. It's still not pissing in anybody's face no matter how much you don't like it.

I tested this yesterday. There were zero hits in TrackerControl with ads removed.

Just ran into this myself. Gotta love betas 😜

For me it's a familiarity thing. I'd been using Sync for Reddit for close to a decade. It's my defacto standard for feature set in these types of apps. I've tried and continue to use the apps that came out first, but every single one of them has quirks that don't align with how I prefer to use the platform. Sync does.

Saying all the apps are literally the same makes me wonder what it is you're looking to get out of them/how you use them. Do you like to share images from posts with people outside of Lemmy? That's easier on some than others.

For example, on Summit I have to open the image in the internal browser then the external browser then copy the link/share from there. On Connect they have a 3 dot menu that has a share url option. On Sync it's a 3 dot then share option/copy URL to clipboard.

It's little nuances like that that make or break an app for me. At a certain level these are all just interfaces to interact with the Lemmy platform so they are going to be similar in many ways. But some apps can offer a better user experience than others. It really depends on what you want/how you use the platform.

Butthole problems

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 🤦‍♂️.

Also worth noting at the time they said it was temporary and due to the lack of sufficient mod tools available in Lemmy. If mod tools improve that could change. But yes, right now it's definitely something to think about with world being a massive instance that m with a lot of larger communities.

I don't agree with the premise that you can only charge for one or the other though. The Sync dev has a track record of putting out a very performant app for close to a decade. A one time ad removal fee and an optional subscription is pretty reasonable IMO.

I get the philosophical problems you have with it though. In the end I'm still using it because I paid like $5 none years ago and got way more than my money's worth with it on Reddit. The ad unlock is more expensive here, but it's probably an early adopter tax with the user base here being a tiny fraction of Reddit.

As for Apollo, I'm not sure how many Apple users pay for apps but if I had to guess they probably outnumber android users easily.

It also feels dirty to use an app only available in the Apple ecosystem as a paragon of open source ideals. That's a pretty adaptive Stallman meter.

What's the connection between code quality and adding ads to make money?

You can also throw the releases page URL into obtainium and toggle to include pre-releases and it'll notify you of any updates/install them.

My goal wasn't to compare Sync to other Lemmy apps, it was to compare it to something I know has a bunch of trackers/ads in it. theScore is a sports news/scores app.