3 ms·

Ten Years of Franz

68 points by tosh 5mo ago

shawn_w 5mo ago
Apparently not about the makers of Allegro Common Lisp¹ and assorted graph database tools. 1: https://franz.com/ https://franz.com/
- bigbuppo 5mo ago
  I too was confused.
block_dagger 5mo ago
Any Franz users here? How does the unification of multiple apps help with managing comms? Is it truly better than using the different native apps?
- TylerE 5mo ago
  I always found the polyglot messengers a bit underwhelming - those sorts of programs inevitably end up focusing on the lowest common denominator feature sets.
- e12e 5mo ago
  I'm using beeper - and it really lowers the mental overhead of tracking messages for me - I have some people on signal, some on messenger, some on sms, some use dms on discord. It's great to have a single app that shows notifications and tracks conversations. Much better than having to try and remember if my conversation with "Tom" was via sms or signal or something else; he might have a messenger account but not use the app - doesn't matter - I just open beeper and find the last conversation and continue from there. Ed: I don't use beeper or messaging on desktop - so Franz is DOA for me. Which is a shame - it looks like a solid product.
smithcoin 5mo ago
I used Franz and then went it went freemium I used ferdi for a while. I like using Zen browser and it’s based on Firefox
- flawn 5mo ago
  Good old times, same for me. Just ended up not bothering and deactivating any additional services - digital detox time ＼ ( ° o ° ) ／
hypfer 5mo ago
I'm impressed that an electron wrapper around web.whatsapp.com and web.telegram.com could make it to 10 years. Thanks ZIRP I guess.
- fragmede 5mo ago
  That's incredibly dismissive of a product that some people find valuable enough to pay money for it. I'm not sure what ZIRP has to do with that, the post states he didn't take VC funding. Is UX not important to you?
  - hypfer 5mo ago
    Yes, precisely. That was the point. Judging the product by its merits/substance and not by its storytelling/hype/hustle. UX is important to me! That's why I do not use the inferior web client of telegram wrapped in electron but the real qt one. Or, alternatively, I just pin the tab in my browser. The UX is so good there, you can even do some surfing beside the chatting. Almost feels like the good old times of presto-based opera.
    - fragmede 5mo ago
      If UX is important to you, how are you missing the point of the app? It seems you are going with the anti-hype against Electron apps and not engaging with the merits/substance of the app.
      - hypfer 5mo ago
        Nah, idc if it's electron or not. What I do care about is if it is a _wrapper_ around someone else's application or not. If you write your own whatsapp/telegram/whatever client, be my guest. But just taking someone else's product and bare-minimum repackaging it is not the level of merit that would warrant 10 years of literally anything; let alone asking for payment for it. Impostorware ____ Also, just think about what a slap in the face this is for the people putting in the hard work of actually building the aforementioned web clients. Some random other person comes along, takes their stuff and receives all the credit. Which, yeah, okay, utilizing market inefficiencies. So that's clever. But it is also rather unethical. In my book, anyway. Your ethics may vary. ____ Having empathy is good and important and all, but you need to point it at the right people. However, those rarely are the ones that are good at storytelling (in which Franz absolutely exceeds. Good job.) Anyway. I repeat myself. My point is that I think you might've automatically deployed a defense script, which is good in itself, but bad when you're being effectively manipulated into deploying it against your own interests. Which is.. well. ZIRP and its consequences
anonzzzies 5mo ago
I thought it was the Lisp Franz and wondered what I missed as that's much, much older. Anyway; I gave this a try (on Mac) and was not impressed; coming in at 1.44GB, immediately very slow and my battery almost immediately flagging it as the app using the most energy, I went through the setup; after the setup was done I was left with a blue empty screen and nothing to click on. So I killed it and started again; that opened my workspace without any messengers added (I added 3 during setup). So I added whatsapp and that resulted in a half screen whatsapp on top of that darkblue again with no options other then to kill the app. After restart, whatsapp was there and working, albeit very slow (franz still consuming most energy); whatsapp is notably slower inside Franz than the separate one (they are both electron I think?). Not Franz their fault, but I added Slack and literally spent 15 minutes solving Recaptcha's of buses over 50 of them, before it let me in... Wtf. I think Slack sucks at the best of times but this was very terrible. Anyway; Not for me, but nice work sticking it out 10 years!
- fithisux 5mo ago
  Exactly. I was tricked too.
- cantalopes 5mo ago
  It's electron, everything electron will always have these performance issues unfortunately Btw actual solution for you might be plain old Pidgin
- Syzygies 5mo ago
  Thanks for saving me the time. I have email locally dating to the dawn of the internet; it's one form of external mind-mapping for me. I'm completely baffled that a decent mail program can't handle the mail for a small town, rather than struggling with one person's life history. This is a question of algorithm choices; performance has to be the top priority. If search is instant, who needs "features"?
- Keyframe 5mo ago
  per description it should've called AntiFranz then.
yellow_lead 5mo ago
Never heard of this product, but seems like Beeper, but more expensive if you want to use more than 3 messaging services. Beeper is completely free, but the downside is it was acquired by Automattic (the WordPress company with the CEO who crashed out over WP Engine)
- maccard 5mo ago
  > Beeper is completely free, but the downside is it was acquired by Automattic This is the cost of free.
  - Dylan16807 5mo ago
    Nah, it can happen to any company.
  - adlk 5mo ago
    Matt actually made an offer all those years back to bring Franz under their roof ;)
- adlk 5mo ago
  > Beeper is completely free Not necessarily true but buried in their FAQ section https://www.beeper.com/faq#how-much-does-beeper-cost-to-use https://www.beeper.com/faq#how-much-does-beeper-cost-to-use
  - yellow_lead 5mo ago
    Wow that is expensive. I stand corrected
AbuAssar 5mo ago
I wish the next stage of opensource is to opensource the prompt that generated the code, I like the main website style and it's clearly AI generated, I want the prompt!
- adlk 5mo ago
  Yes, AI was heavily involved in building this but its literally impossible to share a set of prompts as it's several hundred sessions over the course of months. Design, messaging, UX all those things are extremely important to me and this is nothing I'd trust an LLM out of the box.
UKPakiRapeParty 5mo ago
[flagged]
adlk 5mo ago
Founder of Franz here. Was surprised to find this on the front page this morning and I'm happy to answer your questions – there might be a slight delay as weekends are family time though.
drcongo 5mo ago
I just tried it as Slack is such a bug-ridden piece of crap these days, unfortunately it just loads the Slack website in a view, so you get all the fun of Slack's bugs in a slightly crappier interface. Edit: I should say it's not Franz that has the crappier interface, it's the Slack webview, Franz's interface seems pretty nice. However, if something wants to be the biggest app binary on my Mac outside of Xcode and Logic Pro, it needs to offer a lot more than this.
amelius 5mo ago
Honestly, we should move all messaging to e-mail. Yes, e-mail will need a few more features to make this practical, but those proposals exist.
- locao 5mo ago
  Such as Google Wave? I really wanted it to work.
nchmy 5mo ago
Glad to see Franz is still doing well. I've been using the FOSS Ferdium (a fork of Ferdi, which was a fork of Franz) for many years, and generally find it to be a good experience. Anything annoying is surely inherent to electron and the services being connected to. https://github.com/ferdium/ferdium-app https://github.com/ferdium/ferdium-app

68 points by tosh 5mo ago

Apparently not about the makers of Allegro Common Lisp¹ and assorted graph database tools. 1: https://franz.com/ https://franz.com/

bigbuppo 5mo ago
I too was confused.

block_dagger 5mo ago

Any Franz users here? How does the unification of multiple apps help with managing comms? Is it truly better than using the different native apps?

TylerE 5mo ago
I always found the polyglot messengers a bit underwhelming - those sorts of programs inevitably end up focusing on the lowest common denominator feature sets.
e12e 5mo ago
I'm using beeper - and it really lowers the mental overhead of tracking messages for me - I have some people on signal, some on messenger, some on sms, some use dms on discord. It's great to have a single app that shows notifications and tracks conversations. Much better than having to try and remember if my conversation with "Tom" was via sms or signal or something else; he might have a messenger account but not use the app - doesn't matter - I just open beeper and find the last conversation and continue from there. Ed: I don't use beeper or messaging on desktop - so Franz is DOA for me. Which is a shame - it looks like a solid product.

smithcoin 5mo ago

I used Franz and then went it went freemium I used ferdi for a while. I like using Zen browser and it’s based on Firefox

flawn 5mo ago
Good old times, same for me. Just ended up not bothering and deactivating any additional services - digital detox time ＼ ( ° o ° ) ／

hypfer 5mo ago

I'm impressed that an electron wrapper around web.whatsapp.com and web.telegram.com could make it to 10 years. Thanks ZIRP I guess.

fragmede 5mo ago
That's incredibly dismissive of a product that some people find valuable enough to pay money for it. I'm not sure what ZIRP has to do with that, the post states he didn't take VC funding. Is UX not important to you?
- hypfer 5mo ago
  Yes, precisely. That was the point. Judging the product by its merits/substance and not by its storytelling/hype/hustle. UX is important to me! That's why I do not use the inferior web client of telegram wrapped in electron but the real qt one. Or, alternatively, I just pin the tab in my browser. The UX is so good there, you can even do some surfing beside the chatting. Almost feels like the good old times of presto-based opera.
  - fragmede 5mo ago
    If UX is important to you, how are you missing the point of the app? It seems you are going with the anti-hype against Electron apps and not engaging with the merits/substance of the app.
    - hypfer 5mo ago
      Nah, idc if it's electron or not. What I do care about is if it is a _wrapper_ around someone else's application or not. If you write your own whatsapp/telegram/whatever client, be my guest. But just taking someone else's product and bare-minimum repackaging it is not the level of merit that would warrant 10 years of literally anything; let alone asking for payment for it. Impostorware ____ Also, just think about what a slap in the face this is for the people putting in the hard work of actually building the aforementioned web clients. Some random other person comes along, takes their stuff and receives all the credit. Which, yeah, okay, utilizing market inefficiencies. So that's clever. But it is also rather unethical. In my book, anyway. Your ethics may vary. ____ Having empathy is good and important and all, but you need to point it at the right people. However, those rarely are the ones that are good at storytelling (in which Franz absolutely exceeds. Good job.) Anyway. I repeat myself. My point is that I think you might've automatically deployed a defense script, which is good in itself, but bad when you're being effectively manipulated into deploying it against your own interests. Which is.. well. ZIRP and its consequences

anonzzzies 5mo ago

I thought it was the Lisp Franz and wondered what I missed as that's much, much older. Anyway; I gave this a try (on Mac) and was not impressed; coming in at 1.44GB, immediately very slow and my battery almost immediately flagging it as the app using the most energy, I went through the setup; after the setup was done I was left with a blue empty screen and nothing to click on. So I killed it and started again; that opened my workspace without any messengers added (I added 3 during setup). So I added whatsapp and that resulted in a half screen whatsapp on top of that darkblue again with no options other then to kill the app. After restart, whatsapp was there and working, albeit very slow (franz still consuming most energy); whatsapp is notably slower inside Franz than the separate one (they are both electron I think?). Not Franz their fault, but I added Slack and literally spent 15 minutes solving Recaptcha's of buses over 50 of them, before it let me in... Wtf. I think Slack sucks at the best of times but this was very terrible. Anyway; Not for me, but nice work sticking it out 10 years!

fithisux 5mo ago
Exactly. I was tricked too.
cantalopes 5mo ago
It's electron, everything electron will always have these performance issues unfortunately Btw actual solution for you might be plain old Pidgin
Syzygies 5mo ago
Thanks for saving me the time. I have email locally dating to the dawn of the internet; it's one form of external mind-mapping for me. I'm completely baffled that a decent mail program can't handle the mail for a small town, rather than struggling with one person's life history. This is a question of algorithm choices; performance has to be the top priority. If search is instant, who needs "features"?
Keyframe 5mo ago
per description it should've called AntiFranz then.

yellow_lead 5mo ago

Never heard of this product, but seems like Beeper, but more expensive if you want to use more than 3 messaging services. Beeper is completely free, but the downside is it was acquired by Automattic (the WordPress company with the CEO who crashed out over WP Engine)

maccard 5mo ago
> Beeper is completely free, but the downside is it was acquired by Automattic This is the cost of free.
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  Nah, it can happen to any company.
- adlk 5mo ago
  Matt actually made an offer all those years back to bring Franz under their roof ;)
adlk 5mo ago
> Beeper is completely free Not necessarily true but buried in their FAQ section https://www.beeper.com/faq#how-much-does-beeper-cost-to-use https://www.beeper.com/faq#how-much-does-beeper-cost-to-use
- yellow_lead 5mo ago
  Wow that is expensive. I stand corrected

AbuAssar 5mo ago

I wish the next stage of opensource is to opensource the prompt that generated the code, I like the main website style and it's clearly AI generated, I want the prompt!

adlk 5mo ago
Yes, AI was heavily involved in building this but its literally impossible to share a set of prompts as it's several hundred sessions over the course of months. Design, messaging, UX all those things are extremely important to me and this is nothing I'd trust an LLM out of the box.

UKPakiRapeParty 5mo ago

[flagged]

adlk 5mo ago

Founder of Franz here. Was surprised to find this on the front page this morning and I'm happy to answer your questions – there might be a slight delay as weekends are family time though.

drcongo 5mo ago

I just tried it as Slack is such a bug-ridden piece of crap these days, unfortunately it just loads the Slack website in a view, so you get all the fun of Slack's bugs in a slightly crappier interface. Edit: I should say it's not Franz that has the crappier interface, it's the Slack webview, Franz's interface seems pretty nice. However, if something wants to be the biggest app binary on my Mac outside of Xcode and Logic Pro, it needs to offer a lot more than this.

amelius 5mo ago

Honestly, we should move all messaging to e-mail. Yes, e-mail will need a few more features to make this practical, but those proposals exist.

locao 5mo ago
Such as Google Wave? I really wanted it to work.

nchmy 5mo ago

Glad to see Franz is still doing well. I've been using the FOSS Ferdium (a fork of Ferdi, which was a fork of Franz) for many years, and generally find it to be a good experience. Anything annoying is surely inherent to electron and the services being connected to. https://github.com/ferdium/ferdium-app https://github.com/ferdium/ferdium-app