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Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed

apolloapp.io

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

#131

Post by rekoil »

hug wrote: post #84
fragmede wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apollo's collapsing comment UI could be better - there's a shortcut to go to the next root comment, but I don't want to go to the next root comment, I want to go to collapse the current thread and see the next parent or grand-parent comment. I'm guessing it's because I'm on an older iPhone 7, but Apollo's makes it very hard to write comments. In particular it loses my place when switching from Apollo, to another app…

This specific behaviour is why I love Apollo. I do this exact thing when skimming through threads -- there's a couple of ways to do what you want to do: Tap on the top of a comment to collapse that comment and any below it, assuming you haven't turned off "tap to collapse" in settings > general > comments. Set a gesture for one of the swipe directions to collapse the current thread (I believe this exists, by default,…

Yep, best thing about Apollo!

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

#132

Post by rekoil »

jaflo wrote: post #89
markholmes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there or could there be a way to disable the Home and All buttons? I find Reddit to be much less of a time suck if I’m going to specific subreddits and reading interesting content, but I often just mindlessly browse All without thinking. I had to remove Apollo from my phone (even though I paid for it!) because I often find myself spending too much time doing nothing. My current solution is bookmarking a bunch of i…

I think it would be interesting to disable the infinite scroll and either having a button to load the next page or disable loading the next page entirely.

Never thought about it before, but that makes a lot of sense. The act of choosing to load another page might be enough for me to realise I should have gone to sleep about 2 hours prior.

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

#133

Post by extradego »

iamthatis wrote: post #35
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #12

In my opinion Apollo retains the biggest flaw of the reddit redesign, which is sad: By making the post body, and especially pictures, the first class citizen you incentivize all the wrong things: * It is inviting to mindlessly scroll * Attracting karma is paramount: The game is "upvote this in the 2 seconds I am spending scrolling past it or not" * This in turn incentivizes shallow posts, strong, polarizing messages…

Yo, Apollo dev here. FWIW there's no team, just me. To answer some of these, Apollo was created well before the Reddit redesign, I started working on it back in 2014. I'm not sure I 100% understand the criticism though. Inviting you to scroll through an app is a pretty normal thing, isn't it? What's the alternative? I'm gathering you'd prefer more of a comments-focused experience rather than one focused around the po…

I volunteer a lot of my time to mod a couple very popular subreddits because I simply love Reddit over all other social media, and I agree completely with the above criticisms. Reddit is about communities first, and comments are where those communities are solidified. The posts are like a bunch of buildings, and the comments make them into a community. It’s where people sort out how they relate to one another and the posts.

I love a lot of things about the Apollo App (including the mod tool support!) but I don’t use it because it changes the reddit experience into something I don’t like as much.

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

#134

Post by extradego »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #49
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #12

In my opinion Apollo retains the biggest flaw of the reddit redesign, which is sad: By making the post body, and especially pictures, the first class citizen you incentivize all the wrong things: * It is inviting to mindlessly scroll * Attracting karma is paramount: The game is "upvote this in the 2 seconds I am spending scrolling past it or not" * This in turn incentivizes shallow posts, strong, polarizing messages…

When complaining about UI, it would be much more helpful to pitch a UI that actually addresses your complaints.

I think https://old.reddit.com is that UI, but it’s not friendly UI, so I’m not sure there is a way to satisfy the complaint.

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

#135

Post by blackbrokkoli »

iamthatis wrote: post #35
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #12

In my opinion Apollo retains the biggest flaw of the reddit redesign, which is sad: By making the post body, and especially pictures, the first class citizen you incentivize all the wrong things: * It is inviting to mindlessly scroll * Attracting karma is paramount: The game is "upvote this in the 2 seconds I am spending scrolling past it or not" * This in turn incentivizes shallow posts, strong, polarizing messages…

Yo, Apollo dev here. FWIW there's no team, just me. To answer some of these, Apollo was created well before the Reddit redesign, I started working on it back in 2014. I'm not sure I 100% understand the criticism though. Inviting you to scroll through an app is a pretty normal thing, isn't it? What's the alternative? I'm gathering you'd prefer more of a comments-focused experience rather than one focused around the po…

> no team, just me.

Holy shit, well, that is impressive!

For the record, I am not trying to hate or anything, scrolling through this thread I think there is some kind of cultural disconnect going on. I personally don't care for the infinite content scrolling of today's content aggregator, so I am sad this trend is reflected in more and more places.

I did a poor job of stating this as personal taste and not as assumed facts. Obviously, you (and a lot of others) use and always did use Reddit in a different way than me. There is of course nothing inherently wrong with serving these needs, especially when done in a much superior way like Apollo does.

If you read this reply, I would just like to urge you to keep the negative effects of excessive escapism, polarization, misinformation and group think in mind when designing features. Cheers!

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

#136

Post by zackify »

hug wrote: post #83
zackify wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love apollo! Only 1 problem and it constantly annoys me. Surprised nobody else has mentioned it: Why does the comment and post body hide when you single tap? I am scrolling through a long post and my slow scroll registers as a tap. Now it’s hidden. Tap again and I lose my spot.

I use this feature all the time. I collapse comment chains I'm completely uninterested in by tapping on them. That said, you can turn it off for comments: Settings > General > Tap to Collapse

Thanks. I like it too. It’s just when reading a long main post I find myself collapsing it on accident

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

#137

Post by rladd »

rlad wrote: post #129
iamthatis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yo, Apollo dev here. Could you clarify a bit? There's a setting to make Apollo always use reader mode for websites, and you can create/edit/view multireddits in Apollo as well, I don't think Alien Blue even had multireddit support? ( https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/2kd9yz/does_alie... )

Alien Blue works better than Apollo in reader mode in several very significant ways: - In AB dark mode there is no white flash! The screen stays black while the page is loading. In Apollo the screen goes white until the page is finished loading. - In AB the reader mode forces all sites into reader / minimal HTML mode whether or not the website wants to allow reader mode - In AB the reader mode seems to get more image…

Disappointed that there was no reply to this from the developer. Apparently he either doesn't care about these issues or finds them too difficult to correct!
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