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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

#71

Post by markholmes »

iamthatis wrote: post #39
1123581321 wrote: post #4

This is possibly my most-uninstalled app because it makes reddit too addicting for me to handle. Its popularity is certainly a comment on the problems with overly JavaScript heavy web apps. Apollo’s biggest weakness is notifications. They don’t appear as quickly as they should and, for me, chat notifications don’t come through at all. I don’t prefer chat, but I’ve noticed an increasing number of users will open a cha…

Thanks, apologies for your loss in productivity. :P Great criticism too, re: notifications being a bit slow, that's something I'm working to improve; being an iOS dev the backend web stuff isn't my strongest programming suit, so I'm working to improve that or at least get someone who knows more to be able to help me there. Chat's a little trickier, I've talked to Reddit about that and they don't seem particularly int…

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.reddit.com URLs in Safari, but the experience is really poor.

Thanks for making an app that I used for far too many hours.

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

#72

Post by slipheen »

The biggest advantage for me over the official app is that it doesn't automatically open why I try to load Reddit links in Safari.

Afaik, ios doesn't provide anyway to forcibly disable that behavior system-wide.

That behavior is a deal breaker for me, so I can't have any official apps installed.

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

#73

Post by hombre_fatal »

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'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 noticed ads on Apollo off the top of my head. I thought their biz model was to just paywall pro features.

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

#74

Post by Phylter »

h3daz wrote: post #67
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…

Thank you so much for this app. I transitioned from the official one because GIFs were just not working at all. The GIF navigation and post hiding on scroll made me upgrade. If there's just one thing I miss from the official app it's when I'm on my feed and I click "posts" again, it doesn't scroll to the top. If you considered this small addition that would be fantastic!

For me being able to shuttle through gifs is a big deal and that's the main reason I use it.

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

#75

Post by NoahTheDuke »

rhlsthrm wrote: post #69

Apollo is cool, but I found myself going back to Narwhal after trying out both for a while. I love the comments on top of the media view for Narwhal, and Apollo hasn't matched that experience. The app looks awesome though, either way they are both amazing apps.

Agreed. Apollo is slick but Narwhal continues to be the smoothest commenting (reading and writing) experience.

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

#76

Post by hombre_fatal »

saagarjha wrote: post #66
morpheuskafka wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

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?

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

#77

Post by zackify »

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 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.

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

#78

Post by nikivi »

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?

I use quite a few native apps

https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-ios

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

#80

Post by fragmede »

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…

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 to check something, then switching back. A message pops up about having saved the text, but frustratingly, it doesn't re-open the editor, so I have to go find the comment I was replying to and opening the compose reply there.

As to whether or not it's Apollo's "place" to make it easier/harder to scan, that makes no sense. Apollo's already an alternative UI, so it's already interjecting an opinion on the 'right' way to experience Reddit. That you might disagree with, eg making photo subs harder to scan, is a difference of opinion, but Apollo is already in that "place".

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