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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

#51

Post by hombre_fatal »

ftio wrote: post #42

Not only is Apollo the best Reddit app for iOS, it might be one of the best 3rd-party iOS apps out there, period. It’s incredibly well-designed, very fast, and it’s updated very consistently. Christian, the developer, is a former Apple guy, and it shows — the level of attention and care he puts in is unparalleled. I’d love a hand-curated (by someone with good taste) list of apps of this quality. Anyone know of one?

Not being a huge mobile user at the time, it's probably the first app that made me realize how compelling a mobile experience could be.

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

#52

Post by berberous »

Apollo is really well done, but there’s certain bugs that have been in it since day 1 that are still not fixed (despite reporting them) that kill it for me — namely that “load more” does not fetch the next set of comments in chronological order when sorting by new.

I resorted to trying the official Reddit app and was pleasantly surprised. I assumed it would be way worse, but it’s actually excellent. If you haven’t tried it in a while, I’d recommend it.

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

#53

Post by mentos »

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…

Incredible work really oozes polish and intuitive design.

Have you been chipping away at this since 2014 or did something change in your motivation recently where you decided to complete it?

What would your reaction be to someone suggesting a rewrite in Electron so you could achieve crossplatform support?

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

#54

Post by emit_time »

I was back on the /r/apolloapp sub before the app was released, and was in an early public beta.

I had so many major gripes with all the other reddit apps for iOS, and I tried all the major ones.

I remember using it and dealing with all the bugs, and seeing all the deadline delays etc, never expecting to see it come to light.

Left for a while, and then it was actually released.

And I LOVE it.

Thank you so much iamthatis :)

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

#55

Post by bravura »

ftio wrote: post #42

Not only is Apollo the best Reddit app for iOS, it might be one of the best 3rd-party iOS apps out there, period. It’s incredibly well-designed, very fast, and it’s updated very consistently. Christian, the developer, is a former Apple guy, and it shows — the level of attention and care he puts in is unparalleled. I’d love a hand-curated (by someone with good taste) list of apps of this quality. Anyone know of one?

Bear app for notes, and also see recommendations on thesweetsetup.com... my only grip with bear is it’s iOS only, no web access even. I didn’t care until my iOS and mac both died during travel and i couldn’t use bear from droid or linux

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

#56

Post by cbarrick »

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…

"Old Reddit" refers to the web UI before the redesign, which is still available at https://old.reddit.com/

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

#57

Post by morpheuskafka »

mentos wrote: post #53
iamthatis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Incredible work really oozes polish and intuitive design. Have you been chipping away at this since 2014 or did something change in your motivation recently where you decided to complete it? What would your reaction be to someone suggesting a rewrite in Electron so you could achieve crossplatform support?

I think what makes Apollo great is how closely it integrates with the iOS interface and design language. Its value proposition is that it matches expectations of iOS users and is fast and intuitive on that platform. If you re-wrote it in Electron I think it would become "just another reddit client."

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

#58

Post by StephanTLavavej »

Dark mode is still incompatible with monospace code regions, as reported several times in the ApolloApp subreddit; I tried using Apollo yesterday but couldn’t get past this bug (as I read a lot of code on reddit). Please fix this and I’ll buy the app!

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

#59

Post by rohitb91 »

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…

Hey! May I ask how you decided to make a Reddit app? Did you ever consider using React Native or any other cross platform language?

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

#60

Post by stevewillows »

1123581321 wrote: post #40
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…

I don’t agree. Apollo makes it so much easier to read comments than reddit.com does because of its design choices and the way it handles collapsed comments. I also write longer comments when I’m using it. The “skimability” of the posts you scroll through depend so much on what you subscribe to. I don’t have that issue due to what I read on there. I don’t think it’s Apollo’s place to make photo subs or askreddit harde…

The main struggle with reddit apps are the lack of mod tools. Only Alien Blue and Apollo have a simple method for working a queue. I still prefer Alien Blue's tools in this respect, but a lot of content fails to load with it.

Apollo should be the official app.

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