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I think I now know why Reddit was so generous with all of the Gold. The app, although very fast and responsive on iOS, lacks many of the features that Alien Blu

by asd 11y ago

I think I now know why Reddit was so generous with all of the Gold. The app, although very fast and responsive on iOS, lacks many of the features that Alien Blue had. I could find zero integrations with any third party services. The cool thing about Alien Blue is, if I was a stoplight and didn't have time to read a linked article, I'd just add it to Pinboard and get back to it later. Another major failing - there isn't an option to always open links in your browser of choice. At least use a Safari View Controller, for pete's sake. EDIT: It looks like I can choose to share a link with the ... menu option. I can then share to my Pinner "Quick Save" option to save to Pinboard. Not sure how I missed it.

basch 11y ago
would you prefer homebrew integration or standard ones through the ios share apis?
- asd 11y ago
  Ideally, the iOS share apis. I use the Pinner app and they have two ways to save to pinboard via the share apis- a "quick pin" method where you click once and forget it (what I usually do) and the regular way, where you can add tags, etc.
  - basch 11y ago
    k good. i never really liked that alien blue was sort of half and half. and the save picture button was broken, but the ios share save picture worked.
jscheel 11y ago
I know Alien Blue is feature-packed, but I have always found it difficult to use.
- spike021 11y ago
  I think the GUI wasn't that great, but the features were quite usable and helpful.
- freehunter 11y ago
  The only thing I ever struggled with in AB was trying to visit a specific subreddit. Having to go back to the menu and scroll through all of my subscribed subs (which didn't seem to be sorted in any particular order, and included many subs I used to subscribe to years ago but don't anymore) to find the "enter subreddit manually" button was not terribly intuitive.
  - mercer 10y ago
    FWIW, you can sort the list of subreddits alphabetically at the top of the subreddit list.
jbob2000 11y ago
They were generous with the gold because they're probably going to shut AlienBlue down. AB doesn't have any ads, they can't make money off those users.
- ihuman 11y ago
  They're not shutting AlienBlue down, but they removed it from the App Store, and they are not updating it anymore.
  - jbob2000 11y ago
    They can shut it down by changing the reddit API so it no longer works, thus forcing users to switch to the new app.
    - ihuman 11y ago
      If they do that, they would break every 3rd party reddit app, which reddit said they wouldn't do. Of course, that doesn't mean their position will change in the future.
      - outericky 11y ago
        no, they could just disable the AB API key...
  - wvenable 11y ago
    Ugh. So disappointed.
- shostack 11y ago
  Uh...what are you talking about? AlienBlue has sponsored posts that show up in the feed. It is incredibly annoying too. Unless it is because they screwed up the whole "pay for AlienBlue" thing they did a while back and I wasn't supposed to be seeing ads this whole time despite having paid... My guess though is that this new version will have more of a focus on ads and monetization for sure.

by asd 11y ago

basch 11y ago

would you prefer homebrew integration or standard ones through the ios share apis?

asd 11y ago
Ideally, the iOS share apis. I use the Pinner app and they have two ways to save to pinboard via the share apis- a "quick pin" method where you click once and forget it (what I usually do) and the regular way, where you can add tags, etc.
- basch 11y ago
  k good. i never really liked that alien blue was sort of half and half. and the save picture button was broken, but the ios share save picture worked.

jscheel 11y ago

I know Alien Blue is feature-packed, but I have always found it difficult to use.

spike021 11y ago
I think the GUI wasn't that great, but the features were quite usable and helpful.
freehunter 11y ago
The only thing I ever struggled with in AB was trying to visit a specific subreddit. Having to go back to the menu and scroll through all of my subscribed subs (which didn't seem to be sorted in any particular order, and included many subs I used to subscribe to years ago but don't anymore) to find the "enter subreddit manually" button was not terribly intuitive.
- mercer 10y ago
  FWIW, you can sort the list of subreddits alphabetically at the top of the subreddit list.

jbob2000 11y ago

They were generous with the gold because they're probably going to shut AlienBlue down. AB doesn't have any ads, they can't make money off those users.

ihuman 11y ago
They're not shutting AlienBlue down, but they removed it from the App Store, and they are not updating it anymore.
- jbob2000 11y ago
  They can shut it down by changing the reddit API so it no longer works, thus forcing users to switch to the new app.
  - ihuman 11y ago
    If they do that, they would break every 3rd party reddit app, which reddit said they wouldn't do. Of course, that doesn't mean their position will change in the future.
    - outericky 11y ago
      no, they could just disable the AB API key...
- wvenable 11y ago
  Ugh. So disappointed.
shostack 11y ago
Uh...what are you talking about? AlienBlue has sponsored posts that show up in the feed. It is incredibly annoying too. Unless it is because they screwed up the whole "pay for AlienBlue" thing they did a while back and I wasn't supposed to be seeing ads this whole time despite having paid... My guess though is that this new version will have more of a focus on ads and monetization for sure.