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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 i

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 posts themselves specifically? I've been on Reddit for over a decade, as far as I remember the posts have always been paramount and what attract people to the site, even though the discussions are great too. They're just a tap away. As you mentioned you can go into compact mode, then disable the thumbnails and you've basically got Hacker News, haha. Your criticism seems like more of a comment on Reddit as a platform/community rather than a specific app (though I'm not sure what you mean by "old Reddit", Alien Blue?), but if I'm wrong about that I'm happy to hear any criticism.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mentos 7y ago
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?
- morpheuskafka 7y ago
  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."
  - vpEfljFL 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    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 :(
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Do you have some examples?
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        So you don't miss it, I just gave Christian some feedback in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22345278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22345278.
    - iamthatis 7y ago
      Apollo dev here, like what?
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Off the top of my head, Apollo's recreations of the action sheet, search bar, and navigation controller have subtle bugs. The action sheet is missing vibrancy and does not respond correctly to touch in/out events, nor does it give any sort of indication of being scrollable (it also does the "oreo" thing if you switch between appearances). The search bar does not animate correctly when navigating between view controllers and while collapsing has incorrect rounding and shading. It also fails to take user input or respond to touches at all during animations. Your custom navigation controller does not animate titles correctly, and its swipe handling is frustratingly divergent from the system's: it accepts swipes starting almost a centimeter from the edge and is far too sensitive to accidental flicks. Plus, stylistically, it should be using large titles in certain places but does not. These might seem like minor things, and they probably are for most people, but as an heavy iOS user I have a very good sense for how system components look and function, and it drives me up a wall when people reimplement them but break or fail to support some of their behaviors (specifically: if your custom component is supposed to look like a system control, it better act exactly like one!). As an iOS engineer I also know that these parts of UIKit are the somewhat problematic to deal with, but I appreciate apps that take the time to get it right and I would have hoped that an app that prides itself on looking at home on iOS would have put in the effort to care about this as I do. Hope this helps.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Then it wouldn’t work on iOS.
- phinnaeus 7y ago
  It wasn't "recently completed." I've been using Apollo for years.
- iamthatis 7y ago
  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.
  - SkyMarshal 7y ago
    >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. Out of curiosity, when did you work at Apple? Your website says "built by a former Apple employee", but it seems you've been full-time on this app for most of your post-college years. Great app though, I use it :)
    - flocial 7y ago
      "In the summer of 2014 during my Computer Science degree I was lucky enough to intern at Apple as engineer on the Enterprise App Development team in Cupertino (long way from Eastern Canada), where I learned an absolute ton from some crazy smart people." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cfnfu8/my_names_christian_selig_i_used_to_work_at_apple/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cfnfu8/my_names_chris...
      - mentos 7y ago
        Would love to hear what the big lessons were from that experience if they could be enumerated at all. I jumped directly into working for myself after college and have never held a corporate job. I wonder all the learning I’ve missed out on not being apart of a crazy smart team of people.
cbarrick 7y ago
"Old Reddit" refers to the web UI before the redesign, which is still available at https://old.reddit.com/ https://old.reddit.com/
rohitb91 7y ago
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?
h3daz 7y ago
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!
- Phylter 7y ago
  For me being able to shuttle through gifs is a big deal and that's the main reason I use it.
zackify 7y ago
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.
- hug 7y ago
  I use this feature all the time. I collapse comment chains I'm completely uninterested in by tapping on them. That said, you can turn it off for comments: Settings > General > Tap to Collapse
  - zackify 7y ago
    Thanks. I like it too. It’s just when reading a long main post I find myself collapsing it on accident
- iamthatis 7y ago
  I think you're talking about two separate things, it collapses when you tap because… well that kinda makes sense, there's a button to tap to collapse on the website so I just made the tap target bigger, there's not much else use for a tap. The second thing where slow scrolling can register as a tap and thus collapse it… yeah that's annoying as hell, I know what you're talking about and I'm working to fix it.
criddell 7y ago
> posts have always been paramount and what attract people to the site, even though the discussions are great too FWIW, the comments are the main reason I go to any social media site (Reddit and HN included).
- iamthatis 7y ago
  I'd probably same the same for me too, but I think what draws in the average person is the posts on Reddit more than anything, even if the comments are also gems.
- irrational 7y ago
  Is Reddit social media? Nobody on there knows who I really am. I try to not post any personally identifying information (and even post purposefully misleading information). In my mind it is just interacting with people online or having an online community that defines social media. It is knowing who the people you are interacting with are in real life.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Reddit is very much social media; I stay psuedo-anonymous there and interact with it much as I would with other platforms, apart from putting minimal effort to stay incognito.
jml78 7y ago
How about creating a similar iOS app for this site? :-)
ajkjk 7y ago
I'm another person for whom I only care about the comments. The only point of scanning posts for me is to find good comments about stuff.
tyre 7y ago
I think an interesting UX would be to put voting in the post. So you have to go to the comments to upvote/downvote. That kind of delay encourages discussion and probably helps with the psychological negatives of infinite scroll
Terretta 7y ago
As an early and ongoing Apollo user, this is a fantastic app, highly recommended, including all the premium/ultimate/lifetime whatevers. And the periodic swag offerings are great too. That said, I keep wondering when the iPad design mentioned what seems like ‘years’ ago is coming. I keep hoping for something like Hack for HN that takes what’s currently a waste of screen width when using Apollo in landscape on iPad Pro (posts take 1/2 screen width, with 1/4 screen width margins on each side, putting the posts just out of reach of your thumbs when holding sides of ipad), and instead puts that list of posts on the left 1/4, and shows comments for a selected post on the right 3/4. // Separately, for image post subreddits, like /r/EarthPorn/, really should have a mode to simply view photos scaled to full screen and swipe left/right to prior/next photo post, with a tap to see the post title and vote UI as an overlay, push up to go into photo + comments mode.
extradego 7y ago
I volunteer a lot of my time to mod a couple very popular subreddits because I simply love Reddit over all other social media, and I agree completely with the above criticisms. Reddit is about communities first, and comments are where those communities are solidified. The posts are like a bunch of buildings, and the comments make them into a community. It’s where people sort out how they relate to one another and the posts. I love a lot of things about the Apollo App (including the mod tool support!) but I don’t use it because it changes the reddit experience into something I don’t like as much.
blackbrokkoli 7y ago
> no team, just me. Holy shit, well, that is impressive! For the record, I am not trying to hate or anything, scrolling through this thread I think there is some kind of cultural disconnect going on. I personally don't care for the infinite content scrolling of today's content aggregator, so I am sad this trend is reflected in more and more places. I did a poor job of stating this as personal taste and not as assumed facts. Obviously, you (and a lot of others) use and always did use Reddit in a different way than me. There is of course nothing inherently wrong with serving these needs, especially when done in a much superior way like Apollo does. If you read this reply, I would just like to urge you to keep the negative effects of excessive escapism, polarization, misinformation and group think in mind when designing features. Cheers!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mentos 7y ago

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?

morpheuskafka 7y ago
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."
- vpEfljFL 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    [deleted]
- saagarjha 7y ago
  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 :(
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Do you have some examples?
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      So you don't miss it, I just gave Christian some feedback in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22345278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22345278.
  - iamthatis 7y ago
    Apollo dev here, like what?
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Off the top of my head, Apollo's recreations of the action sheet, search bar, and navigation controller have subtle bugs. The action sheet is missing vibrancy and does not respond correctly to touch in/out events, nor does it give any sort of indication of being scrollable (it also does the "oreo" thing if you switch between appearances). The search bar does not animate correctly when navigating between view controllers and while collapsing has incorrect rounding and shading. It also fails to take user input or respond to touches at all during animations. Your custom navigation controller does not animate titles correctly, and its swipe handling is frustratingly divergent from the system's: it accepts swipes starting almost a centimeter from the edge and is far too sensitive to accidental flicks. Plus, stylistically, it should be using large titles in certain places but does not. These might seem like minor things, and they probably are for most people, but as an heavy iOS user I have a very good sense for how system components look and function, and it drives me up a wall when people reimplement them but break or fail to support some of their behaviors (specifically: if your custom component is supposed to look like a system control, it better act exactly like one!). As an iOS engineer I also know that these parts of UIKit are the somewhat problematic to deal with, but I appreciate apps that take the time to get it right and I would have hoped that an app that prides itself on looking at home on iOS would have put in the effort to care about this as I do. Hope this helps.
saagarjha 7y ago
Then it wouldn’t work on iOS.
phinnaeus 7y ago
It wasn't "recently completed." I've been using Apollo for years.
iamthatis 7y ago
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.
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  >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. Out of curiosity, when did you work at Apple? Your website says "built by a former Apple employee", but it seems you've been full-time on this app for most of your post-college years. Great app though, I use it :)
  - flocial 7y ago
    "In the summer of 2014 during my Computer Science degree I was lucky enough to intern at Apple as engineer on the Enterprise App Development team in Cupertino (long way from Eastern Canada), where I learned an absolute ton from some crazy smart people." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cfnfu8/my_names_christian_selig_i_used_to_work_at_apple/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cfnfu8/my_names_chris...
    - mentos 7y ago
      Would love to hear what the big lessons were from that experience if they could be enumerated at all. I jumped directly into working for myself after college and have never held a corporate job. I wonder all the learning I’ve missed out on not being apart of a crazy smart team of people.

cbarrick 7y ago

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

rohitb91 7y ago

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?

h3daz 7y ago

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!

Phylter 7y ago
For me being able to shuttle through gifs is a big deal and that's the main reason I use it.

zackify 7y ago

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.

hug 7y ago
I use this feature all the time. I collapse comment chains I'm completely uninterested in by tapping on them. That said, you can turn it off for comments: Settings > General > Tap to Collapse
- zackify 7y ago
  Thanks. I like it too. It’s just when reading a long main post I find myself collapsing it on accident
iamthatis 7y ago
I think you're talking about two separate things, it collapses when you tap because… well that kinda makes sense, there's a button to tap to collapse on the website so I just made the tap target bigger, there's not much else use for a tap. The second thing where slow scrolling can register as a tap and thus collapse it… yeah that's annoying as hell, I know what you're talking about and I'm working to fix it.

criddell 7y ago

> posts have always been paramount and what attract people to the site, even though the discussions are great too FWIW, the comments are the main reason I go to any social media site (Reddit and HN included).

iamthatis 7y ago
I'd probably same the same for me too, but I think what draws in the average person is the posts on Reddit more than anything, even if the comments are also gems.
irrational 7y ago
Is Reddit social media? Nobody on there knows who I really am. I try to not post any personally identifying information (and even post purposefully misleading information). In my mind it is just interacting with people online or having an online community that defines social media. It is knowing who the people you are interacting with are in real life.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Reddit is very much social media; I stay psuedo-anonymous there and interact with it much as I would with other platforms, apart from putting minimal effort to stay incognito.

jml78 7y ago

How about creating a similar iOS app for this site? :-)

ajkjk 7y ago

I'm another person for whom I only care about the comments. The only point of scanning posts for me is to find good comments about stuff.

tyre 7y ago

I think an interesting UX would be to put voting in the post. So you have to go to the comments to upvote/downvote. That kind of delay encourages discussion and probably helps with the psychological negatives of infinite scroll

Terretta 7y ago

As an early and ongoing Apollo user, this is a fantastic app, highly recommended, including all the premium/ultimate/lifetime whatevers. And the periodic swag offerings are great too. That said, I keep wondering when the iPad design mentioned what seems like ‘years’ ago is coming. I keep hoping for something like Hack for HN that takes what’s currently a waste of screen width when using Apollo in landscape on iPad Pro (posts take 1/2 screen width, with 1/4 screen width margins on each side, putting the posts just out of reach of your thumbs when holding sides of ipad), and instead puts that list of posts on the left 1/4, and shows comments for a selected post on the right 3/4. // Separately, for image post subreddits, like /r/EarthPorn/, really should have a mode to simply view photos scaled to full screen and swipe left/right to prior/next photo post, with a tap to see the post title and vote UI as an overlay, push up to go into photo + comments mode.

extradego 7y ago

I volunteer a lot of my time to mod a couple very popular subreddits because I simply love Reddit over all other social media, and I agree completely with the above criticisms. Reddit is about communities first, and comments are where those communities are solidified. The posts are like a bunch of buildings, and the comments make them into a community. It’s where people sort out how they relate to one another and the posts. I love a lot of things about the Apollo App (including the mod tool support!) but I don’t use it because it changes the reddit experience into something I don’t like as much.

blackbrokkoli 7y ago

> no team, just me. Holy shit, well, that is impressive! For the record, I am not trying to hate or anything, scrolling through this thread I think there is some kind of cultural disconnect going on. I personally don't care for the infinite content scrolling of today's content aggregator, so I am sad this trend is reflected in more and more places. I did a poor job of stating this as personal taste and not as assumed facts. Obviously, you (and a lot of others) use and always did use Reddit in a different way than me. There is of course nothing inherently wrong with serving these needs, especially when done in a much superior way like Apollo does. If you read this reply, I would just like to urge you to keep the negative effects of excessive escapism, polarization, misinformation and group think in mind when designing features. Cheers!