Mast is a beautiful Mastodon app built with macOS design guidelines in mind. It’s as feature-packed as it is gorgeous. The stunning timelines make reading the latest content a joy. “What is Mastodon?”, you may ask. It’s a federated and decentralised social network. Think of it as email, where you c…
A very cool looking and powerful Mastodon client for iOS that I’ve used for the past year and I really like it so far!
So I have mixed feelings about this app after using it for a few months. It looks really nice and is arguably the only app that’s brought multi-platform Apple device support for Mastodon via SwiftUI, so for that I give the dev major props.
With that said, there are some big issues here. Notably, the app is full of bugs that have not been resolved and really impact the user experience. Notably, the timeline requires multiple attempts to be refreshed in order to display content, and certain types of media will totally crash the app in “Boosted” and “Contains Media” filtered modes. Push notifications don’t work at all due to an expired certificate.
I’ve made the dev aware of these things but the app has largely received no updates. I looked into the history of this developer and while I have nothing personally against him, I see that he’s published a multitude of paid social media apps and then abandoned them shortly afterwards and made new ones to replace them that were also paid. Lots of disappointed users who were dealing with bugs just months after paying for what seemed like a cool app only to be told they needed to buy the ‘new’ app he just put out to keep getting the experience. I’m not saying that what he’s doing is intentionally like that, but it is really shady to me when a developer has had like six Twitter apps in the past so many years. He has had two Mastodon apps within the last year (the previous one being Roma, which is still in the App Store and is also paid). I’ve also noticed that he’s changed Apple developer accounts upon releasing new apps which may be to make it appear as though he is a different developer when he is not.
So to those who are considering buying this app, it’s not a bad option and it’s the only option for devices like the iPad and Apple Watch outside of using Mastodon on the web. But I believe some of the dev’s actions and way of going about app development may be questionable and that is worth knowing. I’d say based on their history perhaps don’t expect Mast to get many updates.
It’s a shame cause he makes good feeling/looking apps! It’s also a shame because he made Mast open source for a hot minute and then took it down. I have the source code from that, but it’s not up to the last two versions he released so it’s a bit buggier than what’s on the store right now. Here’s hoping that perhaps someone will take that open source code and do something with it so Mast can be saved from being abandonware.
So I have mixed feelings about this app after using it for a few months. It looks really nice and is arguably the only app that’s brought multi-platform Apple device support for Mastodon via SwiftUI, so for that I give the dev major props.
With that said, there are some big issues here. Notably, the app is full of bugs that have not been resolved and really impact the user experience. Notably, the timeline requires multiple attempts to be refreshed in order to display content, and certain types of media will totally crash the app in “Boosted” and “Contains Media” filtered modes. Push notifications don’t work at all due to an expired certificate.
I’ve made the dev aware of these things but the app has largely received no updates. I looked into the history of this developer and while I have nothing personally against him, I see that he’s published a multitude of paid social media apps and then abandoned them shortly afterwards and made new ones to replace them that were also paid. Lots of disappointed users who were dealing with bugs just months after paying for what seemed like a cool app only to be told they needed to buy the ‘new’ app he just put out to keep getting the experience. I’m not saying that what he’s doing is intentionally like that, but it is really shady to me when a developer has had like six Twitter apps in the past so many years. He has had two Mastodon apps within the last year (the previous one being Roma, which is still in the App Store and is also paid). I’ve also noticed that he’s changed Apple developer accounts upon releasing new apps which may be to make it appear as though he is a different developer when he is not.
So to those who are considering buying this app, it’s not a bad option and it’s the only option for devices like the iPad and Apple Watch outside of using Mastodon on the web. But I believe some of the dev’s actions and way of going about app development may be questionable and that is worth knowing. I’d say based on their history perhaps don’t expect Mast to get many updates.
yeah, i’ve used some of the dev’s other apps and sadly it’s mostly abandonware as you mentioned
when i made this post the app was free, if it’s paid you probably shouldn’t buy it, yeah
It’s a shame cause he makes good feeling/looking apps! It’s also a shame because he made Mast open source for a hot minute and then took it down. I have the source code from that, but it’s not up to the last two versions he released so it’s a bit buggier than what’s on the store right now. Here’s hoping that perhaps someone will take that open source code and do something with it so Mast can be saved from being abandonware.
could you share the source pls?
Absolutely, originally courtesy of BoFFire: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkeOmb_v3eqZtOdYRodE9ZJYYZCd_A?e=Ftcmrw
He set up a repo here: https://github.com/boffire/mast2