Similar post, 340 comments 9 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235
Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
11–20 of 85 posts
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#12Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and text formatting options to annoyances like slow/delayed animations and janky scrolling, there's just a huge lack of thought or polish in Reddit's app. I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow…
They should just buy it from the developer.
I think this could be an implicit coercion attempt to get the app on the cheap leveraging lack of the alternatives for the developer
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#13Am I the online who uses Firefox and old.reddit.com to browse reddit on my phone? It works pretty well.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#14Am I the online who uses Firefox and old.reddit.com to browse reddit on my phone? It works pretty well.
This is what I do and it's not great. It's fine for me but I understand if people don't like zooming in all of the way to click the tiny "comment" button.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#15Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and text formatting options to annoyances like slow/delayed animations and janky scrolling, there's just a huge lack of thought or polish in Reddit's app. I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow…
They should just buy it from the developer.
The irony is they already did that with Alien Blue, and now we’re here.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#16Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and text formatting options to annoyances like slow/delayed animations and janky scrolling, there's just a huge lack of thought or polish in Reddit's app. I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow…
They should just buy it from the developer.
[deleted]
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#17Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and text formatting options to annoyances like slow/delayed animations and janky scrolling, there's just a huge lack of thought or polish in Reddit's app. I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow…
They should just buy it from the developer.
They already did that kinda. They bought Alien Blue, which was the top iOS Reddit client before Apollo. They brought the dev onboard, sunsetted the Alien Blue app in favor of a new official Reddit mobile app, and gave all of the users who had purchased it a few years of Reddit Gold credit.
I think that app may be the basis of the current Reddit app somewhere deep down inside, but it basically bears no resemblance at this point since Reddit's priority is chasing ad revenue and TikTok style feeds instead of just letting people follow and comment in their communities.
This of course left a gap for a new good iOS client and Apollo was born.
If they bought Apollo I'm sure the same cycle would occur again.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#18Everything built on hardware you don't own is doomed to end like that at scale, yes? When are we going back to owning your own fast, light, redundant hardware so you don't have to charge millions for free APIs that were responsible for all your growth in the first place?
I'm not sure what difference it makes where or how the site is hosted?
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#19> Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month
900,000 total users, if they were all converted to paid users, would cost $1.89 per user, so Apollo could charge $1.99 per month. Or they could charge $2.50 per month as stated above.
This seems reasonable for access to all of reddit and their engineers to maintain it for you?
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#20> Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month 900,000 total users, if they were all converted to paid users, would cost $1.89 per user, so Apollo could charge $1.99 per month. Or they could charge $2.50…
I mean the people that make the content are users. The same people who use the app.