I've been using sync since 2017ish or so and the long absences didn't bother me nearly as much because reddit wasn't constantly changing like Lemmy is. I happily paid for sync for reddit, but I won't pay for sync for Lemmy until he commits to at least fixing annoying small issues whenever a new Lemmy version drops. I've defended the author in the past but I'm honestly getting quite frustrated with the lack of updates and radio silence for months at a time while Lemmy is dropping updates quite often. I don't care about new features, just maintain parity with the latest Lemmy version, I'm sick of my posts showing as unread when I know I've read them.

Just small updates to keep up with new Lemmy versions, no need to make huge updates all the time, the app is already awesome, it just needs to maintain parity with Lemmy. Or at least acknowledge that he's aware of the problems and will be fixing them, I don't need a timeline but just a "hey I hear you, I'm working on the next update" would be much better than constantly disappearing.

All that said, I still have an immense amount of respect for LJ and I hope he's doing well. This is just an app for nerds, real life takes priority obviously and I understand that. But I'm frustrated at how long it's taking to fix basic bugs like posts not showing as read.