Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed • Hacker News Board

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#111

Post by flocial » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

iamthatis wrote: post #100

hombre_fatal wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought that kind of business model was a bit questionable. You build a client and show ads on top of someone else's content? We consider it pretty ridiculous if a browser were to inject its own ads. Yet if you build a client that pulls free content from https://librivox.org/ or podcast RSS and serve it from their servers, nobody bats an eye if you inject ads into it. Though I'm pretty sure I haven't noti…

Apollo doesn't have any ads or do this, not sure what that person is talking about. (Apollo dev)

I'm guessing he means the upgrade call to action or release notes (lots of updates to the app so some might consider it an annoyance who knows). BTW, thanks for the app. After Alien Blue died a slow painful death I was lost for a decent client.

Please change the swipe sensitivity for collapsing comments or sending replies or maybe change single tap to collapse. I always trigger replies when I want to collapse.

Edit: found the setting and changed both to collapse (I'm pretty sure it wasn't there before. This app's constantly being polished up)

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#112

Post by mentos » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

flocial wrote: post #110

SkyMarshal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Started working on it in 2014 then moving to full time in 2015 when I graduated university, then in late 2017 finally released it. :D So been full time about 4.5 years at this point. Out of curiosity, when did you work at Apple? Your website says "built by a former Apple employee", but it seems you've been full-time on this app for most of your post-college years. Great app though, I use it :)

"In the summer of 2014 during my Computer Science degree I was lucky enough to intern at Apple as engineer on the Enterprise App Development team in Cupertino (long way from Eastern Canada), where I learned an absolute ton from some crazy smart people." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cfnfu8/my_names_chris...

Would love to hear what the big lessons were from that experience if they could be enumerated at all. I jumped directly into working for myself after college and have never held a corporate job. I wonder all the learning I’ve missed out on not being apart of a crazy smart team of people.

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#113

Post by procinct » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

iamthatis wrote: post #100

hombre_fatal wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought that kind of business model was a bit questionable. You build a client and show ads on top of someone else's content? We consider it pretty ridiculous if a browser were to inject its own ads. Yet if you build a client that pulls free content from https://librivox.org/ or podcast RSS and serve it from their servers, nobody bats an eye if you inject ads into it. Though I'm pretty sure I haven't noti…

Apollo doesn't have any ads or do this, not sure what that person is talking about. (Apollo dev)

You're completely right, I was mistaken. Was thinking of other Reddit client's I've tried. It's been a long time since I purchased the full edition so my memory is a bit hazy. Sorry about that.

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#114

Post by procinct » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

procinct wrote: post #44

huhtenberg wrote: post #7

Does it show ads?

It shows it’s own ads, not Reddit’s. you can pay a one-time fee to remove them as well.

I'm completely mistaken here, Apollo has no ads. One-time fee is for other features.

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#115

Post by procinct » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #73

procinct wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shows it’s own ads, not Reddit’s. you can pay a one-time fee to remove them as well.

I've always thought that kind of business model was a bit questionable. You build a client and show ads on top of someone else's content? We consider it pretty ridiculous if a browser were to inject its own ads. Yet if you build a client that pulls free content from https://librivox.org/ or podcast RSS and serve it from their servers, nobody bats an eye if you inject ads into it. Though I'm pretty sure I haven't noti…

You're right, it is just to paywall pro features. I was mistaken. Mixed it up with other Reddit clients.

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#116

Post by dingo_bat » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 3:03 AM UTC

I have big complaint on ios reddit apps and that is no nsfw filtering. Many times /r/all shows nsfw images containing nudity or gore, and there is no way to tell the app to filter the thumbnails! This is such a basic feature on any android reddit app. I read that it has to do with something about app store policies. But that just sounds dumb. Why would policies force the app to show adult content always?

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#117

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

iamthatis wrote: post #98

saagarjha wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apollo actually ditches native components in certain places and tries to reimplement their behavior, getting it wrong in some places. It drives me insane enough to use an entirely different app :(

Apollo dev here, like what?

Off the top of my head, Apollo's recreations of the action sheet, search bar, and navigation controller have subtle bugs. The action sheet is missing vibrancy and does not respond correctly to touch in/out events, nor does it give any sort of indication of being scrollable (it also does the "oreo" thing if you switch between appearances). The search bar does not animate correctly when navigating between view controllers and while collapsing has incorrect rounding and shading. It also fails to take user input or respond to touches at all during animations. Your custom navigation controller does not animate titles correctly, and its swipe handling is frustratingly divergent from the system's: it accepts swipes starting almost a centimeter from the edge and is far too sensitive to accidental flicks. Plus, stylistically, it should be using large titles in certain places but does not.

These might seem like minor things, and they probably are for most people, but as an heavy iOS user I have a very good sense for how system components look and function, and it drives me up a wall when people reimplement them but break or fail to support some of their behaviors (specifically: if your custom component is supposed to look like a system control, it better act exactly like one!). As an iOS engineer I also know that these parts of UIKit are the somewhat problematic to deal with, but I appreciate apps that take the time to get it right and I would have hoped that an app that prides itself on looking at home on iOS would have put in the effort to care about this as I do. Hope this helps.

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#118

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #76

saagarjha wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apollo actually ditches native components in certain places and tries to reimplement their behavior, getting it wrong in some places. It drives me insane enough to use an entirely different app :(

Do you have some examples?

So you don't miss it, I just gave Christian some feedback in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22345278.

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#119

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #107

criddell wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> posts have always been paramount and what attract people to the site, even though the discussions are great too FWIW, the comments are the main reason I go to any social media site (Reddit and HN included).

Is Reddit social media? Nobody on there knows who I really am. I try to not post any personally identifying information (and even post purposefully misleading information). In my mind it is just interacting with people online or having an online community that defines social media. It is knowing who the people you are interacting with are in real life.

Reddit is very much social media; I stay psuedo-anonymous there and interact with it much as I would with other platforms, apart from putting minimal effort to stay incognito.

Re: Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

#120

Post by mcatis » Mon, Feb 17, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

Apollo had my favourite feature from any Reddit browsing experience, which was displaying the parent comment of the comment you are viewing if you used 3D Touch. I found this incredibly useful while browsing through long discussions, and it made the experience of reading through comments, which are often my favourite part of using Reddit, so much more convenient than anywhere else.

After Apple removed 3D Touch from their new devices, I assumed that some kind of workaround would be introduced into the app, even if it wouldn’t be as convenient as the old method. But despite seeing it mentioned a bunch of times on the Apollo subreddit, the usually very responsive developer has ignored people asking about it, and no workaround has appeared. It’s still probably the best Reddit app out there, but it’s a real shame to see such a useful feature removed and users ignored.