Christian is a brilliant developer, that made simply the best experience for reddit that ever existed; after the ban, and when Apollo was dead, I simply stopped consuming reddit (other than an occasional kagi search that takes me there).
I hope he knows that a lot of iOS users really appreciate his work, (I even convinced one hardcore Android user to get an iPhone just for this one app, it was that good).
Like many others, I said I’d quit Reddit when they killed Apollo. I was skeptical that I’d actually follow through, but it didn’t end up being a sacrifice at all. The official app sucks so hard it isn’t fun to browse, and now that the mobile site forces you to download the app, I don’t even look at posts from search results much anymore.
The official app is so bad that basically all quality posters left, along with practically all decent moderators except power-tripping assholes who are happy as long as they have a ban button.
Reddit's post quality dropped so hard after they killed off the API. It's night and day.
then you got companies astroturfing their own subreddits cough /r/snowflake pumping their own fake comments about using whatever AI nonsense they have and relentlessly downvote anything questioning if the content in the sub is even real lmao. this thread had me in tears https://www.reddit.com/r/snowflake/comments/1uoioz6/coco_gui... the mod of that sub de-modded the snowflake employees and there's a sticky now talking about what to do about snowflake fake engagement. lmao that subreddit is a prime example of how the utility of subreddits has pretty much evaporated
it's so funny how corporations throw literally everything they have to control narratives and it just drives people away. all companies tried so hard to have a twitter presence and that site is now nothing but a wasteland of sports journalism and racist bots.
but yeah, reddit sucks. it can't decide what it wants to be but it sure is barreling towards yet another crappy scrolly social media platform
My use of Reddit also drastically reduced after Apollo stopped working (I didn’t follow the instructions that many others have been to sideload the app, configure with an API token, etc.).
But I found a couple of ways to browse without using the official app. One is Safari, with the free SinkIt for Reddit extension, and another is a free app called Lurker. The Lurker app is nowhere close to the speed and smoothness of Apollo. It also seems to drain the battery quicker, but the UI is relatively clean.
I don't have the app and I use reddit (although not often) via my mobile browser (firefox) and it never forced me to download the app, as far as I recall.
I encountered that blocker today, so I decided to try Safari's Hide Distracting Items (1) feature, which blocked it once and for all, which I was pretty impressed by.
It does it occasionally to me (Safari on iOS). When it happens, I just close the page. I hope this is enough of a signal to make someone think.
I land on Reddit every couple of days or so, and if they don’t kick me I read the thread and sometimes browse a bit a couple of subreddits I used to participate in.
Yeah my phone was doing that for a while. I just took it as a sign that maybe I should spend less time on Reddit. After a while it stopped gating me. Not sure if that was a measured decision on their end, or just that the experiment ended.
Bars! My friends and I constantly talk about how good Apollo was. I've tried side loading with alt store as well, but I can't seem to keep it stable, it crashes, fails, etc.
I’ve said it in a few other places here before, but axing Apollo is the reason I’m on HN at all.
I used to use Reddit daily to follow a few games and news subs, and was fairly active in a couple of those communities as a contributor.
But I don’t know that I miss Reddit all that much, save for a few small corners of the community. The discourse here is a lot more thoughtful, generally, and the community aspect is what I enjoy the most.
Christian’s work on Apollo made me hopeful that good app devs will continue to exist (shoutout to HACK for iOS, it’s a great HN reader), and I’m glad he seems to be doing something pretty cool with his time
You can use Apollo reborn still with your own API keys. I personally use a modded reddit app on Android or old.reddit in Firefox. Reddit is way too valuable to stop using entirely. I also use it in LLMs asking them to reference reddit if I am looking for specific suggestions.
Apollo was for users, reddit main purpose isn't for the user anymore. How would they get rid of r/all with all the 3rd party clients around? Much harder when you don't control the full experience.
I have 2 subreddits I still look at, and I can only bear to use old.reddit, new.* is such a hot mess. I should just leave reddit entirely, but /r/localllama does surface some stuff early that takes quite a while to make it here and other tech hubs.
> I should just leave reddit entirely, but /r/localllama does surface some stuff early that takes quite a while to make it here and other tech hubs.
I do that every now and then but LocalLlama has become such a pain to read. Between the stupid memes, the useless benchmarks and the hype train of the week, I feel the signal to noise ratio has dropped significantly. I haven’t really found anything like what it was 1 or 2 years ago.
I hope he knows that a lot of iOS users really appreciate his work, (I even convinced one hardcore Android user to get an iPhone just for this one app, it was that good).
For that, thank you Christian!