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?
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.
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.
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.
I think it all boils down to the state of the official reddit app.
I switched to iPhone from Android (regrettably) not long ago, and Apollo honestly wasn’t really better than other third party Android apps I had before, I even liked it less.
I used the official reddit app for years until I tried third party apps and found them better, and when I switched to iPhone I tried the official app first and it was barely usable. Especially that god awful video player that never seemed to work properly, and even when it did it just wasn’t good.
So as soon as you factor in the fact that the vast majority of Americans own iPhones, it all makes perfect sense.
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.
This right here. Someone showed me wefwef the other day, and it feels like Apollo if you want the experience. Definitely my favorite mobile app for the fediverse.
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.
I can’t speak for Apollo but I used RIF and old.Reddit
I work with a bunch of techies with various opinions on this; he said I like “an app that looks like it was from 10 years ago”, which was meant to be an insult, but I think is actually the point: it was text-first, list view, “get out of your way” to enjoy the content.
I don’t like advertising pretending to be content.
I don’t like the integrations that pushed paid crap like their version of Bitcoin.
And I am here because even though Reddit is still active, it’s clear that the ship is being sailed solely by momentum at this point and the company is, well, only going up be able to do so much until they can’t pay what little staff they have. The way the mods and app developers were treated this month was the lowest of the low and sealed my decision.
You may be surprised to learn that reddit has 2000!!! employees. What the hell 2000 people do at reddit, I have no idea.
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 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.
I’m guessing part of why Apollo took a spotlight was the dev being very open in how he was trying to negotiate with reddit and how spez tried to smear Apollo with lies about blackmail.
I never used Apollo, but it’s pretty clear the dev loves making it, and is very communicative with it’s community. Which is great.
The official app is hot garbage.
The other piece about why Apollo was so amazing is more the recognition. It FELT like an Apple app. It navigated the way every native iPhone app did and back when it was new especially had a fluidity that just didn’t exist. More importantly Apple recognized this so much that they themselves talked about it frequently at events, showed off devices with it, and even most recently at WWDC mentioned it as the only social media app. It was a high praised app because everyone recognized the hard work and keen eye that developed it.
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.
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.
Reddits objective is to provide a tunnel of ads to its users. The third party apps were created to provide a better interface with reddits content.
Thats pretty much all you need to know.
and I’ve never gotten a proper answer to “why not just use the official app?”
After all the astroturfing on reddit, I can’t assume this post is in good faith after seeing this question
It was great! A simple and beautiful UI, packed to the brim with features for the hardcore user but yet still very easy to use for noobs. It made navigating Reddit a joy and it was constantly updated. You could clearly see it was a labor of love from the developer.
