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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

#91

Post by teknover »

Reading the comments, I thought I’d jump in to try Apollo again. I recalled it being stifling and yep sure enough, it hasn’t changed:

Basic navigational functionality such as swiping through content from one post to another is not available by default, instead it is behind a paywall.

Look, I totally get if there’s premium functionality such as notifications, better posting functions that you need to charge for it.

But as it exists it has less functionality than the default reddit app in which you can navigate. If you’ve already broken user trust by degrading a basic service I will not trust to pay you for the rest.

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

#92

Post by _rs »

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…

How about fixing Apollo's existing messaging features first anyways? It is very frustrating to use.

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

#93

Post by jjcm »

iamthatis wrote: post #32

Hey, I made this! Cool to be on HN. :D Thanks for all the kind words.

Heya Christian - huge fan of the app. I was wondering if you could share some of your journey / early designs for the app? It’s one of the most well designed mobile apps I’ve used and I’d be curious to see how it evolved in your mind.

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

#94

Post by behindsight »

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…

Reddit's developer terms do have a provision for contacting them with regards to monetizing your app. I recall the developer of "reddit is fun" had a revenue share agreement with reddit.

YouTube for example, prohibits showing any ads on screens that serve YouTube api data, and you will lose api access if they catch you doing that.

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

#95

Post by phinnaeus »

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?

It wasn't "recently completed." I've been using Apollo for years.

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

vpEfljFL wrote: post #61
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."

Just to pint out using Electron will be able to allow publish this beautiful application to other systems. Electron not an issue here, vs code is written on it and it's loved text editor for thousands of software engineers which use it every day for several hours.

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by iamthatis »

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?

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.

Electron wouldn't be a great idea since it doesn't work on iOS. React Native would be something to consider, but I've never been super impressed by any of the results (and it comes with a bunch of issues in and of itself, and to my knowledge isn't compatible with macOS like UIKit is now) so I'd change nothing in that regard.

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

#98

Post by iamthatis »

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 :(

Apollo dev here, like what?

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

#99

Post by iamthatis »

_rs wrote: post #92
iamthatis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How about fixing Apollo's existing messaging features first anyways? It is very frustrating to use.

Could you elaborate?

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

#100

Post by iamthatis »

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…

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