I’ve seen the app Apollo as the center of the reddit protest (it was mentioned and cited more than any other app in relevant posts). I’ve also seen many Lemmy clients in development taking inspiration from it.
As a lifetime Android user I’ve never been able to use it, and I’ve never gotten a proper answer to “why not just use the official app?” What made it different from the official application and other unofficial clients that consequently made it so popular among Redditors?
It was the first app that made Reddit easy on an iPhone. I wasn’t a Reddit user, I was an Apollo user.
Christian had a great rapport with his users. We felt like we were in a journey together with a guy who really cared about what he was doing.
And the app itself was really really fabulous. Great features. Well organised.
I’m confident the devs at Wefwef or Mlem will look at Apollo as a template and make the fediverse happen quickly.
Ease of use is key.
It’s the same reasons why many people on Android swore by other third-party apps like Sync, RIF, Joey, Relay, Boost, etc: they’re all better than the official app, running way faster and with far more features and customization options to make browsing Reddit actually a smooth and fun experience.
It just has so many unique features. Like sharing a comment or post as a screenshot including a customisable number of comments above it and the post itself. Very useful for quickly sharing or saving comment chains with context, without fiddling with collapsing comments and cropping. Or categories for your saved posts and comments so you could organise. A reminder function built into the app. A subreddit watcher that alerts you whenever certain keywords were posted in a sub. And many more. Lots of things that required more than just developing an app to access an API and display stuff. Gestures were the best I ever used. UI was clean and useful without fiddling with customisation. I was on Android until last year and tried many apps, Apollo beats them all.
But I think it was at the centre of attention because the developer is very responsive and Apollo is the app for Reddit on iOS. On Android you have users spread out across Sync, Boost, RiF, Joey and many more.
The official app is just featureless in comparison. I’m left-handed and you can’t even move the pictures of the posts to the left in compact view so I can access the picture/link/Video without reaching all the way across my phone. Might sound insignificant, but it’s something very simple that every Reddit app I used had and a deal breaker for me.
It was one of the most well polished apps I’ve ever used. It was constantly being improved without changing the core of what it did.
Think of it as an Apple product. It did loads of clever things in the background, powerful and easy to use while maintaining a slick aesthetic. The content was the style and the UI was satisfyingly plain. It never broke.
Media player was great and No ads ever.
Lots of gestures to make it simple and quick to browse Reddit. My favourite was the swipe to the right to hide all the posts I’d seen above.
I could go on.
It just worked. You could swipe to vote and to comment. You had the ability to read messages mid thread. It looked good. It was also the spiritual successor of alienblue, an app that was well loved and bought out by Reddit to make their official app which retained very few similarities.
And beyond all that the dev worked hard, communicated with users, and was extremely up front about how Reddit screwed him over with the API change. He’s the one that Huffman accused of threatening Reddit. The other app devs didn’t record their interactions with Reddit.
Apollo was big in the headlines because its developer was the most vocal about the API changes.
As for why people used third-party apps, it’s mostly a preference thing. Something to note is that reddit didn’t always have an official app. Everyone using reddit before 2016 had to use a third-party app if they wanted to use reddit on their phone. A lot of the apps we watched get shut down, especially the ones on android (RiF, Sync, BaconReader, etc) have been around for a long time, and had loyal user bases.
Apollo was younger than the official app, but it was likely favored by those who had used Alien Blue (a very popular third-party app for iOS that was bought by Reddit and turned into the official app)
I could search comments.
What else do you need?
Apollo was made by someone who used to intern at Apple and it had that feel, imo. It was intuitive, thought-out, and functioned flawlessly. I know you’re an Android person, but take all the positive buzzwords around the Apple product philosophy and apply it to a Reddit app.
The big things and the little things. Lots of gestures - hold on a comment and drag it up and it’ll upvote, hold and drag down, downvote.
You could even have it display the current weather at the top when you were in a location-specific sub.
Apollo felt more like a built in iOS app than some of the actual built in apps
Looks like you are lucky one. Times when reddit client on android just goes “Something went wrong” when playing video is enourmous. And even if in video plays, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll have the sound even if there is sound in the video. I don’t know if Apollo was as great as they say, but rif was a life saver. It had nicer ui overall and also was less buggy.
Apollo’s video and gif player was so good. Scrub anywhere you want, fast loading, and compared to the official Reddit app — it actually worked.
The user experience. It was fast, easy to use, visually appealing, and the actions were intuitive. It honestly had everything going for it, and performed better in areas where the official app lacked.
Honestly I’m more of a Sync guy, but I have tried Apollo when I switched to iOS for a little bit. While I did enjoy it I actually enjoyed Slide more because I liked the gestures a little better. iPhones are pretty popular (at least here in the states), and Apollo is the the most popular 3rd part app, so it make sense that it’ll be the one you hear about the most.
It wasn’t anything super hard to understand. It just worked well and eliminated a lot of crap while focusing in on the most core parts of the experience. It was also a very pure iOS design, conforming to the iOS app guidelines that help it match the UI expectations of iPhone users. Apple’s design guidelines are stronger and better adhered to so there really isn’t a good analogue for Android, where different manufacturers all do different things.
Its got a sleek and easy to use UI, is jam packed with features like customisable gestures, no ads, a great media player and (I think) lots of accessibility features.
It’s also wonderful that the dev loved his app and continually updated it
And the Dev was always listening to his users. He’d even personally reply to people on email.
He was just a good dude. He was the anti-spez.
He was even better than that - not many people realised he purposely allowed free posting from Apollo to Reddit groups related to depression, suicide, addiction etc.
Normally you had to pay for Pro sub in Apollo to be able to post, but he didn’t want to create any barriers for people seeking help so allowed the free app to post to those subs.
It was just such a great app. Features such as hiding read posts, auto scroll back when you accidentally scroll to the top of your feed, appearance customizations, and a great dev who took feedback and improved the app based on what people wanted.
would be curious to hear about it… I usually used web ui and only left reddit because of their approach of dealing with the community. Didn’t personally suffered any inconvenience due to api shenanigans.
I’ve been using old.reddit since 2008, even after the onset of mobile. The normal UI aka “new reddit” is horrifying and from what I can see the app is the same. There are various features missing in the new web interface as well as various situations where it restricts or lies to you, such as if you’re not signed in and it’s “mature content” or “unreviewed content” and it won’t let you view it - then go to old.reddit and you can view it with no difficulty. But anyway the writing is on the wall that they’re not going to support that interface forever, so might as well give up now.
