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?
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)
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.
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 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.
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.
Yes. Apollo had a near-flawless interface. Christian kept smoothing up the experience until it was a dream to use! Because he listened to his users and built in the most popular functionality requests. And kept fixing stuff that broke due to changes outside of his control.
Example: at some point a couple years back, links to YouTube videos no longer consistently worked (some could no longer be played from within Apollo). Christian added a feature so Apollo would open the phone’s YouTube app, load the requested video there, and start playing it.
Also his work to make gifs act like YouTube videos comes to mind. In Apollo you could scrub forwards and backwards in a gif, mute or play the sound where available.
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.
I didn’t know that. Yet another reason to love Apollo.
we even had a bunch of chats on twitter about random things, animals rights, electric scooters and all that. Just a really good dude.
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.
I’ve been losing my shit over Wefwef honestly, shit is really amazing, especially for a “side-loaded” app on a relatively small service, especially compared to the native reddit app. I’m excited for more features to come, and specifically that there’s just no ads on it, and shit scratches that itch that my iPad baby ass needs. More than anything, I just cannot get over how it allows you different experiences across these connected instances like kbin.social or sh.tjustworks, like an actual full link aggregator, compared to a single continuously self contained site feeding you it’s own content. The link to it is wefwef.app works for Apple and Android
I’ve been trying out Wefwef today and, while I agree it’s amazing, I’m hoping that it eventually develop its own character. I’m very slightly worried a Apollo-clone will discourage Christian from making his own Fediverse/Lemmy app… but primarily it just makes me miss Apollo more :(
That said, I’m super excited for its future
honestly, I have been blown away by how cool Wefwef actually is. I’d recommend it to anyone migrating to Lemmy.
Wefwef is my first experience with PWAs and I’m blown away at how well it works. It feels like a native app and super similar to Apollo in UI which is just astounding. I don’t see why this isn’t a more commonly used “platform”
Seriously tho. Wefwef is incredible. Every instance should install it and give the choice to its users between the two frontends. PLus it would solve the rate limitation problems as both would be hosted on the same server.
I use Mlem ATM and I like it but Wefwef is crazy good.
Does that work for this server?
I had issues with it not loading posts and comments properly, and just put it down to it not being compatible with servers older than 0.18, which lemmy.world isn’t on yet.
Yeah, I’m posting from WefWef using lemmy.world for this. I’ve had some issues, but genuinely, nothing that the Reddit app wasn’t doing itself in not loading content for me.
Fediverse stuff takes an extra second sometimes since it’s not all hosted on a single instance, so it will sometimes take a second try to access stuff. As chronically online, it’s worth the second chance.
Except for delivering the long promised iPad update haha
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.
The great thing about Apollo is that you can customize the gestures.
The dev.
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.
Haha, “an app from 10 years ago” is so true. I kept using AlienBlue through thick and thin for exactly the reason – it’s heavily text focused and all about the comments. No “cards” design or auto-playing videos or what have you.
You may be surprised to learn that reddit has 2000!!! employees. What the hell 2000 people do at reddit, I have no idea.
I swear this number grows by 100 every time I see it lol.
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.
This is probably the best answer so far that I’ve recieved and makes me understand the situation of redditors much better.
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.
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.
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.
Go to wefwef.app and try out the PWA clone of Apollo for lemmy 😉
OMG! I did it right now out of curiosity and a bit cautious and it’s a web app that looks and behaves like Apollo!! What’s this magic?? It works incredibly well! Thank you!
Long time android person that used sync a looooong time. I did a stint with an iPhone and felt bad because I actually preferred Apollo over Sync. The interface and app as a whole just felt more polished. Sorry lj!
