Betalogue
Ivory by Tapbots 
@betalogue Half of Apple's apps are Catalyst apps as well. Not sure what the issue is? The only thing that's important is that it behaves like a Mac app and performance is good.
@ivory I want to believe you. I don’t want apps that behave like Mac apps. I want apps that ARE Mac apps. If the two can become indistinguishable, great. What I have seen so far, including from Apple, suggests otherwise. I am just saying I am a very picky Mac user. I won’t put up with things that just more or less feel or look like the real thing. I am always seeking apps that are simple, efficient, and as glitch-free as possible. Sadly, Mac Tweetbot has quite a few bugs that were never fixed…
@betalogue And that's because it was a Mac app based on Appkit and not Catalyst. 🙃 The whole point of going with Catalyst is so we can develop the Mac app alongside the iOS app without it falling so far behind. Even being a Catalyst app, there's a ton of work involved to make things behave more like they should on Mac. If it was being done in Appkit, we wouldn't ship it for at least a year and by then it would already be far behind the iOS version.
John Gruber@ivory @betalogue Even at this early stage I think Ivory is a better Mac app than the last version of Tweetbot. And it’s improving in that regard each week.
Jack@gruber I can’t tell you how happy I was when command-w worked 😂
Shuntera@gruber @ivory @betalogue I’m not paying a monthly subscription to use an app for an open source platform. Happy to pay a one off, but I won’t be nickel and dined every month for a bunch of apps that I use.
@shuntera @ivory @betalogue So even if you knew for a fact the app was better than anything else and you’d enjoy it, you’d spite yourself and not pay for it. Enjoy using a lesser app.
David Saker@gruber @shuntera @ivory @betalogue I feel bad that I only paid £5 once for Tweetbot & got updates forever.
Vilhelm Rothe@david @gruber @shuntera @ivory @betalogue There were multiple versions, 1, 2, 3 etc, that needed to be purchased all over each time. And from 6 on it was subscription 🤷.
@vilhelmr @gruber @shuntera @ivory @betalogue Mmmmm - maybe I did pay more than once? But seems a bargain for the amount of hours I spent on it…. with no ads.
@david @vilhelmr @gruber @shuntera @ivory Exactly. On the other hand, once you do charge for a subscription, there is an expectation of regular updates with actual bug fixes.
As far as I am concerned, in recent years, Tweetbot for Mac had been stagnating. I didn’t pay for a subscription, so I was OK with it, but I would have been willing to pay more if it had been properly maintained and improved.
@betalogue It stagnated because there was no subscription. Everyone bought it already and so our developer wasn't making enough money to maintain it and maintaining it was a TON of work. He had to go find work elsewhere. We learn from our past mistakes. 🙂
@ivory Understood. Maybe it would have helped for Mac users like me to be informed of the situation at the time (unless I missed something). As it was, it just felt like the app was being neglected for whatever reason and reports of problems were just being ignored. (I’m not a heavy iOS user, so I didn’t pay much attention to that side of things.)
I understand running a small business like this in this climate is hard, of course. Hope you can find a better way in the new… situation.
Robert Wawrzyniak@gruber @shuntera @ivory @betalogue A subscription might be acceptable if Tapbots uses part of the revenue to fund Mastodon development. As it stands, I find the current situation rather unfortunate and it sours my enthusiasm for Ivory dramatically and I'd rather pay for a larger one-time purchase #noxp
@thuringia @shuntera @ivory @betalogue If that’s what Mastodon’s creators wanted they could’ve put that in the license. So do you think I should get a portion of the proceeds for every sale of a Markdown text editor?
@gruber @shuntera @ivory @betalogue There’s a difference between paying a licence fee (what you’re describing) and participating in an open source project.
The way Tapbots described how they see Mastodon and its underlying technology, I’m just disappointed they don’t support it. Other than the philosophical aspects of OSS there’s also a direct benefit for them. Funding for Mastodon covers costs for mastodon.social, meaning invites could be opened up again, which in turn means more users of Ivory can start using Mastodon easier.
In any case, is it wrong, what Tapbots or Ivory do? No it’s not.
Am I a bit disappointed? Yes.
To be perfectly honest, If you had a Patreon for Markdown, I’d have joined years ago. Supporting you, and Markdown, would have been an easy 1-3$ pledge, because it changed the way I work that much. You did not have something like that though, so reading your articles and sharing them was the only thing I could do…
The way Tapbots described how they see Mastodon and its underlying technology, I’m just disappointed they don’t support it. Other than the philosophical aspects of OSS there’s also a direct benefit for them. Funding for Mastodon covers costs for mastodon.social, meaning invites could be opened up again, which in turn means more users of Ivory can start using Mastodon easier.
In any case, is it wrong, what Tapbots or Ivory do? No it’s not.
Am I a bit disappointed? Yes.
To be perfectly honest, If you had a Patreon for Markdown, I’d have joined years ago. Supporting you, and Markdown, would have been an easy 1-3$ pledge, because it changed the way I work that much. You did not have something like that though, so reading your articles and sharing them was the only thing I could do…
@thuringia I actually did have something like a Patreon in the early years of Markdown. Some kind of tip jar via PayPal, brought in a few hundred dollars, if I recall correctly.
@gruber I never knew. Reading via RSS has its downsides. I see why you stopped using the tip jar though. I’m happy it wasn’t zero though. That happens way too often
@thuringia Anyway, I can’t speak for Tapbots, but I wouldn’t judge their contributions to Mastodon yet. At the moment they’re hustling to get Ivory off the ground after Twitter yanked the rug out from under their primary commercial product.
@gruber You’re right and I might have judged them too harshly. The situation sucks, and the pressure they are facing is enormous. What they’ve shown so far with Ivory is amazing and if they keep this up, I’m sure they will contribute some way or another
@thuringia @gruber @shuntera @ivory A subscription is perfectly acceptable if that’s the only way that the developer can survive. It cannot be easy making a living by selling quality software. I will NEVER pay for Twitter as long as Elon Musk is at the helm. OTOH, I am more than happy to pay a subscription fee for Ivory — as long as the product lives up to the promise (and is properly maintained).
@betalogue @gruber @shuntera @ivory I agree 100%. I’m not happy that things are like that TBH, but I accept that this is the reality of our industry.
My, admittedly pedantic, issue with the Ivory subscription is that Tapbots made a very big deal about the philosophical aspects of Mastodon and how they believe it’s the future. Not supporting the development of Mastodon feels like a mixed message to me. I’d be perfectly happy if Ivory let’s you now how you could support Mastodon development. That way, Ivory grows the user base, _and_ the amount of potential supporters
My, admittedly pedantic, issue with the Ivory subscription is that Tapbots made a very big deal about the philosophical aspects of Mastodon and how they believe it’s the future. Not supporting the development of Mastodon feels like a mixed message to me. I’d be perfectly happy if Ivory let’s you now how you could support Mastodon development. That way, Ivory grows the user base, _and_ the amount of potential supporters
@thuringia @gruber @shuntera @ivory I am supporting Mastodon development by voluntarily paying a monthly contribution to the owner of my instance.
I suspect and hope that the Tapbots folks will contribute to the development of Mastodon as a platform by making their own open-source contributions to the open-source software, since that is how (in my understanding) “open source” actualy works and thrives. It does not have to be a monetary contribution.
@betalogue @gruber @shuntera @ivory Contributions can take many forms, absolutely.
I hope you are right, and they will contribute code, money, or in other ways.
My point was simply that given the emotional arguments that were raised, I was missing something like “right now, we have to survive, but we will definitely contribute because we believe in Mastodon’s future”. That would have been more than enough, I just expected more of Tapbots and was disappointed.
I’m sure they have more to say on that topic, once the situation has calmed down a bit, and I’m looking forward to hearing what their ideas are to grow and support this platform
Matthias@thuringia they are supporting mastodon the same way they supported Twitter: by making it accessible with a good client. Regarding subs.. the situation without them was: you buy v1, get a few updates until the dev starts saving new features for v2. As a user you don’t know when v2 comes and you pay for the upgrade (or don’t). Work subs, the devs don’t need to hold anything back. Steady income means you can continuously work on the software.
𝒜dam 𝒮cheinberg // sethadam1
Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊)@shuntera @gruber @ivory @betalogue open source != free …I pay for lots of open source software as well as closed-sourse apps which interface with open source.
Sean@shuntera i hope you’re paying the admin for your instance.
JamesRS@shuntera @gruber @ivory @betalogue How do you feel about paying good money each time you buy an orange, when those trees don’t get a dime?
@shuntera @gruber @ivory You cannot have cheapness and quality at the same time. Software designers have to make a living. Mastodon’s audience is a tiny fraction of the size of Twitter’s audience. Software designers will need our support, and if it takes subscriptions, so be it. If you want cheap, be content with crappy open-source free stuff. Many Mac users want better than that and are willing to pay for it. I am one of them. But I *am* demanding.
Mingo 🦩 Hagen@shuntera @gruber @ivory @betalogue following your logic, you *would* pay a subscription if it ran on a closed source platform?
Cabinet 20 🌱 
@shuntera @gruber @ivory @betalogue You’re not paying for the open sourced bit, your paying for their effort in building an amazing app over APIs. You’re paying for their time. Honestly blows my mind that people don’t get this.
Gary Owen
marca56
Rishi Ó@gruber @ivory @betalogue @pschiller I’d kind of wish brought back eWorld in the form of a Mastodon Instance ‘for the rest of us’. I know… that’s not going to happen - but imagine if it did ⌁
Daniel Šnor@gruber @ivory @betalogue I have the same opinion about the iOS version of Ivory as I am an iPad Pro user.
#iloveivory
#iloveivory
@gruber @ivory I’ll believe it when I see it. When the time comes, if I see it, you can be sure I’ll say it and acknowledge that I was wrong to be overly skeptical.
It’s all about the little things. I’m very picky and notice every detail that is wrong. I am a very demanding user. I will be keeping a very close eye on things.
(I also sincerely hope that Ivory will finally address some of the BIG issues I had with Tweetbot for Mac, e.g. the inability to cache more than about 2,500 tweets.)
@betalogue @ivory “I’m very picky” is perhaps my favorite thing you’ve ever written. That’s why we read you!
Christina Warren@gruber @ivory @betalogue I totally agree. I’d stopped using any Twitter client on macOS and moved to a PWA, even tho I missed Tweetbot shortcuts, Ivory can use all the APIs and create its own stuff so it is already more robust to me so far.
Bret Carmichael@film_girl @gruber @ivory @betalogue There’s one way to settle this. Give me a TestFlight invite. (It wasn’t a good try, but it was try)
Mustapha Hamoui@film_girl @gruber @ivory @betalogue I can’t believe Mac App purists are still out there. It’s either Catalyst or Electron for any developer who want to be on multiple platforms. Sketch found out the hard way that people can be very happy with web apps. So did 1Password, Arq, Slack and VSCode. Speaking of VSCode, why don’t you ask Panic how well Nova, their Mac code editor is doing.
@Beirutspring @film_girl @gruber @ivory Based on what I know, I’ll definitely take Catalyst over Electron, but my understanding is that it takes extra effort to make Catalyst apps well-behaved Mac apps. Wanting a well-behaved app is not being a purist. It’s demanding that developers not forget that the Mac is a different platform and fine-tune their app accordingly, especially since Apple itself has failed to do it for them.
@Beirutspring @film_girl @gruber @ivory I have no current beef with Ivory (using the iOS app on my phone). I just hope that the Mac app, when it comes out, is a well-behaved Mac app. What I am hearing from the Tapbots folks (and early users) is encouraging, but the fact that it is going to be a Catalyst app makes me wary, and I think it’s understandable.
@Beirutspring @film_girl @gruber @ivory To give just one particular example, beyond smaller (yet, of course, still important) details such as Page Up/Page Down support, my sense is that it’s much more important to provide Mac users with a reliable way to preserve their current position in their timeline than it is in iOS. I imagine most heavy iOS users make a much more “immediate” use of social networks, and don’t care as much about this and about chronological order in general.
Chad C.@gruber @ivory @betalogue What can us commoners do to get in on the action? Long time subscriber here desperate for some mac syncing timelines.
Brian McMurray
Nico 🦊
Cruising Steveswijk
Kamil@gruber @ivory @betalogue Beacuse Tweetbot on Mac stucked on version 3 when iOS version had version 6 I remember?
weiran@ivory Catalyst apps can make great Mac apps that are as good as native. Tarring them all under a single broad brush of being crap is a bit elitist.
Especially when often the option is a Catalyst app or no Mac app at all.
@ivory From my POV as a user, the bugs in Tweetbot that annoyed me were obvious and easy to fix: image not showing in the image well after I’d drag-and-dropped it, close button not showing in the separate window displaying an image, etc. These never were fixed, even after years. I guess you’re telling me you didn’t have enough resources to maintain (fix bugs in) both an iOS and a Mac app at the same time, and you will with Catalyst. Fine. We’ll see. Please offer a good process for bug reporting.