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‎Amplosion: Redirect AMP Links on the App Store

350 points by tambourine_man 5y ago

rdtwo 5y ago
Almost worth it
- covercash 5y ago
  It was on sale for $1.99 yesterday.
RKearney 5y ago
You can accomplish this for free by simply switching your search engine to DuckDuckGo instead of Google.
- _tom_ 5y ago
  Google is way better at some classes of searches, still.
  - michaellee8 5y ago
    For example duckduckgo produce nothing useful when you search Chinese keywords. DDG maybe good at doing English searches but Google obviously have much more resources.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - yepthatsreality 5y ago
    I was wondering when you’d get here!
  - nofinator 5y ago
    Agreed. But in those cases where I don't like DDG results, I like how I can add "!g" to the end of my search and it redirects the search to Google.
    - slvng 5y ago
      Doing this on mobile is really not fun, I wish it was a simple click in their results UI
      - nickflood 5y ago
        You can do "g!" instead of "!g" on mobile. (And even hn! works, but not every other one.) This helped me considerably
  - schleck8 5y ago
    Use whoogle then https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
- mastazi 5y ago
  AMP is also used in other places e.g. any external links in Twitter when visited on mobile (IIRC)
- nabaraz 5y ago
  I use Google because i) it displays stock price right on the search page. ii) it does match right on the search page. If DuckDuckGo did smarter results like this, I'd quit Google. Heck I'd even throw in a few bucks.
  - rscoots 5y ago
    http://www.startpage.com http://www.startpage.com
    - kyleee 5y ago
      Startpage is no good; sold out to an ad company
  - JoshTriplett 5y ago
    > I use Google because i) it displays stock price right on the search page. So does DuckDuckGo; here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/6nCNGZk https://imgur.com/a/6nCNGZk > ii) it does match right on the search page. What do you mean by "match" here?
    - nabaraz 5y ago
      Google displays a chart with 1d-1m-ytd etc tabs as well. > match meant to say math.
- NoblePublius 5y ago
  I have a new laptop on which I set DDG as default and have been tracking myself resorting to Google 50% of the time due to poor results.
- wayneftw 5y ago
  If you still want to use Google, you can request the desktop site too. No amp links. I don't know how much longer that will continue to work though. Many sites ignore it and show the mobile version anyway.
_tom_ 5y ago
If I trusted an app that I expect has to look at every url I ever visit, $3 is a no-brained.
- simonklitj 5y ago
  It’s open source. You can even build it yourself it you want to
  - teddyh 5y ago
    It’s not open source, it lacks a license entirely. And, therefore, nobody is allowed to build it themselves.
    - simonklitj 5y ago
      You can sure build it, if you want to. And the source is open, so you can check it out. But sure, I’ll cave. What would be a better term for this?
      - saagarjha 5y ago
        Source available?
        simonklitj 5y ago
        Nice, thanks! Didn’t know that one.
      - teddyh 5y ago
        > You can sure build it, if you want to. I am physically able, yes, but I am not legally allowed to. Since I am not given any permission (i.e. license) to do that. > And the source is open, so you can check it out. The term “open source” is used in two ways: the intelligence community reportedly uses it to refer to information sources which are publicly available, as opposed to secretly gathered information. The other use of the term “open source” is as defined by the OSI, who pioneered this new use. The usual term for source code which is merely available for reading, and not much, if anything, else, is “source-available”¹. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software
throwaway13337 5y ago
I quite like these safari extensions. They almost make up for the forced safari monopoly on iOS (but not really). I use dark reader on chrome for computers. They also have a safari extension that surprisingly works just as well. https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader https://darkreader.org/safari/ https://darkreader.org/safari/ I'm concerned, though, whether these extensions work the same as chrome extensions. Can they view and potentially upload your browser passwords/bank info/etc? Is there some limitation that prevents this in the implementation?
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  Firefox had amazing support for mobile plugins. I haven’t checked in a while though. I assume Apple doesn’t permit this so you’re kinda limited with an iDevice. (he says from his iPhone)
  - zaik 5y ago
    uBlock Origin for Firefox Mobile (Fennec on F-Droid) is a killer feature. I cannot remember the last time I have seen an ad on my phone.
    - Waterluvian 5y ago
      AdGuard (I think?) gets about 80% of them on Safari. But I agree uBlock Origin is amazing. It’s kind of Firefox’s killer feature.
  - mastazi 5y ago
    Firefox still supports mobile plugins but, a while ago (IIRC last year), the plugin API changed, as a result currently the selection of available plugins is much smaller than it used to be. I should add that I haven't checked in a few months, maybe it's improved now.
    - m-p-3 5y ago
      Broad addons support is still locked behind the Nightly version, and you gotta do this weird dance to achieve it https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio... Still the same a year later..
CyberDildonics 5y ago
This is an advertisement
- gjs278 5y ago
  it’s the best advertisement ive ever seen in my life. google can fuck off this is great. I only wish it didn’t make the little puzzle piece appear on the URL bar but it’s a small price to pay.
forrestthewoods 5y ago
Is there a sweet extension that completely blocks all pop-ups for a given domain? Certain webpages hide all kinds of ads and when you click UI buttons it triggers an ad-click. I would like to straight block all of them. Does such a thing exist?
- tones411 5y ago
  Have you tried any ad blocker extensions to see if they already handle that?
dhsysusbsjsi 5y ago
$4.49 in Australia
arcticbull 5y ago
$3 is an absolute steal. Shut up and take my money!
InvaderFizz 5y ago
Well that was the fastest app purchase I ever made. Never been so happy to fork over $3.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
neil_s 5y ago
Genuine question: what is the advantage to the end user by seeing non-AMP versions of webpages?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mathgorges 5y ago
  Just bought it. I think of it as a $3 automated boycott. I don’t like amp for various reasons (not the purpose of this reply) and I expect Google can calculate an AMP bounce rate — they tend to serve ads on the page anyway. This app allows me to communicate with Google in a language they value: data.
KindOne 5y ago
The author of this app made a post on Reddit a few days ago. https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/pvvi83/googles_amp_pageslinks_are_outrageously_annoying/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/pvvi83/googles_amp_p... The program is opensource. https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  Haha. Not only did this individual hate AMP enough to make this extension, so did Joseph Duffy https://twitter.com/joe_duffy/status/1409146065912225794?s=21 https://twitter.com/joe_duffy/status/1409146065912225794?s=2..., and so did I https://twitter.com/eric_wvgg/status/1440688602321621000?s=21 https://twitter.com/eric_wvgg/status/1440688602321621000?s=2...
- NmAmDa 5y ago
  It's source available but not open source. The license part in the repo README explains that.
  - pnt12 5y ago
    The author claims its open source but then explicitly omits a license to the repo, so they are misusing the term.
    - kobayashi 5y ago
      They are not. It’s open sourced, not FOSS
- 3np 5y ago
  Questionable if it was ever really open source, more like "source available". The author has nor removed the source from the repo. Most recent public fork I found is now mirrored here: https://github.com/3nprob/Amplosion https://github.com/3nprob/Amplosion > Safari extensions require your permission to run, so in the interest of transparency I wanted to make the app completely open source. [...] > License: This is open source in the interest of transparency, and I hope this doesn't need to be said but please don't take this as an opportunity to reupload the code and call it your own. This is the equivalent to the GitHub "No License", so you're more than welcome to inspect the code and audit it, but you do not have permission to repurpose it as your own.
jeffrogers 5y ago
Man, I just want a t-shirt with the app icon artwork on it...
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  It took me a second to realize it is not supposed to be an exploding Winamp logo.
sandworm101 5y ago
This reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson's speeches about race version of street cars: Paying more for less car. Ten thousand dollars more for the same car but without air conditioning. A few thousand more for one without rear seats. Eventually we will we be paying an infinite amount of money for a car that doesn't exist. Three dollars to disable this OS feature. Another three to not use passwords. A few more for bypassing another feature tomorrow. One day we will be paying for an OS that doesn't actually do anything. But isn't that exactly what happens every time I buy a laptop? I am paying for an OS that I am going to bypass/dump/replace the moment I open the box!
- koolba 5y ago
  It’s not an OS features. AMP links are a Google product that are incredibly annoying. The OS feature being leveraged here is adding a URL scheme handler that routes those annoying AMP links to their actual destination.
- aikinai 5y ago
  The OS (iOS) and the service you’re paying to modify (Google) are very different, so this analogy doesn’t make any sense. If Apple charged you to not use ScreenTime or something, sure, but that’s not the case.
- cunthorpe 5y ago
  What he said doesn’t make sense anyway. More is less. Plenty of people pay extra to have a slimmed down version of something, ask Apple users.
tshaddox 5y ago
The best thing about this is that AMP links totally break “open this page in the website’s native app” links, which I encounter frequently, presumably because the browser is on an AMP proxy domain and thus the iOS native app URL listener doesn’t work. It’s absolutely shocking that such a core flow is completely broken by default when you’re coming from Google search results. This app fixes this problem!
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  I would happily pay for an Open Source adblocker-style extension that intentionally breaks "do you want to download and install our app instead of using a perfectly reasonable web browser that you're in control of" pop-ups. If I don't already have the app installed, there's a reason for that. (In general, an adblocker is one of the most valuable things I have installed. I wish EasyList had a subscription option; I'd happily pay to help support its maintenance.)
  - rosstex 5y ago
    Not always the case. Sometimes I'm looking for something and come across a link to a reddit thread. I'd like to jump to the app easily. What I don't like, however, is how hard websites try to block you from accessing their website without opening the app first.
    - JoshTriplett 5y ago
      That's what I mean. If I have the app installed, I probably want to use it. If I don't have the app installed, I don't want the site trying to push me to install it; I just want the content in my browser tab. And Reddit is indeed one of the worst offenders here.
    - wayouteast 5y ago
      Reddit hard blocks you on some subreddits from the default mobile page. You have to go to the app or go to <subdomain>.reddit.com to bypass the block. Super super super super stupid. Like why block /r/popular from the web and force it to use the app?
tambourine_man 5y ago
I’d pay a good deal of money to have early 2010 style Google back. Mainly: - No AMP - If I quote a string, you better be goddamn sure it’s present on the pages that you show me. - One ad per query. These days the organic results are after the page fold. This is unacceptable for something that’s supposed to be a search engine. —- The second one gets little attention but it’s infuriating to me. I mean, I’m explicitly telling the engine what I want. If it’s not including it in the results, I might as well not even be here typing. Just show me whatever it thinks I want based on everything it knows about me. And no, unfortunately verbatim doesn’t always help.
- savanaly 5y ago
  By verbatim I assume you mean quoting a string. Example query using that that you consider unsatisfactory?
  - matttb 5y ago
    After you do a search there's a 'tools' button. Clicking it gives you a dropdown with the option to change from 'all results' to 'verbatim'. There's also the 'Advanced Search' https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search where even if you enter a word in quotes in the 'this exact word or phrase' box you still get results without your query. I don't have an example query, but it happens all the time. I put a query in quotes and google gives results that neither have the quote in the page blurb on google nor on the destination page.
    - gumby 5y ago
      Having to click around to get a normal search is clearly an anti pattern. Forcing someone to reach for thé mouse rather than simply typing is an insult.
      - joshuaissac 5y ago
        The default search engine can be changed in the browser so that it always invokes Google Search in Verbatim mode. However, there is a side effect that Wikipedia is replaced with strange mirrors in the search results. And some of the desirable fuzzy searching is also lost.
xvilka 5y ago
What's so bad about AMP? If anything, it makes many news sites more "readable", less junk and distraction. Walled garden? Yes, but so is Apple ecosystem, which is this extension for.
- wyager 5y ago
  Don’t hijack my URLs without my permission. Full stop.
- thatswrong0 5y ago
  Google should let me fucking disable it without having to rely on a safari extension, because it makes many websites less usable / more broken in many ways. My mobile speeds are fast enough.
- valine 5y ago
  It’s glitchy, takes up screen real estate, it’s hyper sensitive to horizontal swipes and will sometimes load an unrelated pages, and instantly forgets your cookies and logins (absolutely awful for sites like Reddit where I want to stay logged in). That’s my list anyway.
- tambourine_man 5y ago
  It stupidly and needlessly reinvents scrolling. By doing so, it completely breaks lots of standard and core browser behaviors, such as: - can’t tap menu bar to scroll back to the very top of the page - can’t find anything on the page because it breaks built in search (unless you’re lucky enough to have the string visible on the viewfinder ) - old man argument, I’ll admit, but I want the site I’m visiting to be the domain I’m seeing in the address bar. This is the Web, not some Google sub domain. - scrolling is janky on older iPhones. Oh, and messes your cookies so you’re never logged in. You need an extra tap to redirect you to the site you actually pay for. And probably a whole lot more I’m not remembering.
- q-rews 5y ago
  I hate it as much as everyone else, but last time I stripped AMP I got a useless paywalled adridden website so I ended up just sharing the AMP URL
rastafang 5y ago
Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/
vincentmarle 5y ago
I finally upgraded to iOS 15 today just to be able to download this app. That's how much I hate AMP.
ghostly_s 5y ago
Assuming this is a web extension, you'll only be living amp-free in safari. (pretty sure iOS doesnt allow hijacking another domain's universal links?)
- q-rews 5y ago
  Correct. Some extensions still offer tools via the share dropdown though. This extension could add a “Open without AMP” option in there.
  - schleck8 5y ago
    You could just use https://www.amputatorbot.com https://www.amputatorbot.com in this case. The extension's selling point is convenience
bjornstar 5y ago
There's already the Redirect AMP to HTML extension, I use it for both Firefox & Chrome - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-amp-to-html/kifkmmpiicbcnkjaliilaoeaojlldonl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-amp-to-ht...
- q-rews 5y ago
  The point here is that this can be used on iPhone, so there was not already something there.
  - julianlam 5y ago
    ... and in typical Apple fashion, it costs money to get it.
    - theshrike79 5y ago
      Yes, damn developers wanting money for their work!
      - julianlam 5y ago
        No, it's not about that, and shame on you for thinking so. It's the plain fact that if this were a problem on Windows or linux, a free script would be available, but because it's Apple, it's a paid plugin or add-on, as it is with everything you need to customise an apple device. It's a matter of developer culture, where you develop things for a fun, and to solve a problem. Not to make a quick buck.
jiggawatts 5y ago
#1 article on the YC News front page. #1 most popular "tools" app in the App Store. Google: Take the hint, please.
- franze 5y ago
  no, they don't care, this is how the ampthtml-team reacts to criticism https://twitter.com/enzenhofer/status/1442821842050428933 https://twitter.com/enzenhofer/status/1442821842050428933 #blocked
tones411 5y ago
Take my money
halotrope 5y ago
Thank you! If there is one thing where Google went to far its that abomination of bad UX and power abuse called AMP. I was fearing I will never get rid of it on iPhone. Would probably also have paid US$10
unobatbayar 5y ago
The developer who made the app is brilliant. Seems like any App he builds becomes a success. Not sure how he does it.
dqpb 5y ago
So, this happens almost daily: I’ll be reading news in an amp page hosted by Google, which I navigated to via Google news, within Google chrome, and half way through the article the page suddenly breaks and I see “Aw, Snap! Something when wrong while displaying this web page”. There was a time in my life when I believed working for Google was the highest indication of talent. Now, I marvel at how a $1.6 trillion dollar company can’t even serve a page of text and images without fucking it up.
Daneel_ 5y ago
I wonder if Amplosion affects other browsers on iOS too, or does it purely work with Safari? Eg, Chrome or Opera Touch
tediousdemise 5y ago
Thank you for doing this!
oceliker 5y ago
The name of the developer sounded familiar, so I looked him up — turns out he’s the developer of Apollo, likely the best reddit iOS client.
pjdorrell 5y ago
The name reminds me of "DCOMbobulator", another software whose purpose was to turn off something that caused endless trouble and which you never asked for in the first place.
kdunglas 5y ago
While it looks great, this app isn’t open-source. Open-source means that the source code can be freely modified and redistributed. This is explicitly forbidden by the license of Amplosion. The proper term for this kind of licence is “source-available”. The description and the website are misleading and should be updated.
asplake 5y ago
Seriously considering purchasing (I hate AMP with a passion), but what’s the nonsense in the reviews about dogs and games and stuff? I don’t need that kind of distraction.
NmAmDa 5y ago
While the extension source is available. The developer deliberately make it non licensed which means it he retains all copyrights and it is not an open source by any useful mean. And he ia quite aggressive about that. https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion/issues/1 https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion/issues/1
- Arnavion 5y ago
  I find it weird that both you and TechnologyClassroom in that GitHub issue thread brought up copyright. Even if the developer had used an open source license, they would still have retained copyright. You can complain about the license just fine, but copyright is not relevant to that discussion.
  - NmAmDa 5y ago
    The developer in the r/apple subreddit said that it is an open source and a couple of comments here made that claim also. So I was just clarifying. It is more about And to be clear about that. That's from github docs "You're under no obligation to choose a license. However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. If you're creating an open source project, we strongly encourage you to include an open source license" [1] And in the developer last comment in the issue he closed he quoted that also to explain that it is not allowed to do anything except seeing code for transparency purpose. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/licensing-a-repository#choosing-the-right-license https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...
SSLy 5y ago
>Respectfully, I think this fits the colloquial definition of open source that your average person (myself included) views as open source and would recognize, and I'm more than happy with that. Fuck your "colloquial definition"
- hyproxia 5y ago
  I agree with you, but he's right in a way: The original purpose of "open source" was to dilute the free software movement, so even though the OSI doesn't recognize such licenses as "open source", it's no surprise why the "average person[/developer]" sees it that way.
evanb 5y ago
I'd pay for an app that could do the same for Apple News links.

rdtwo 5y ago

Almost worth it

covercash 5y ago
It was on sale for $1.99 yesterday.

RKearney 5y ago

You can accomplish this for free by simply switching your search engine to DuckDuckGo instead of Google.

_tom_ 5y ago
Google is way better at some classes of searches, still.
- michaellee8 5y ago
  For example duckduckgo produce nothing useful when you search Chinese keywords. DDG maybe good at doing English searches but Google obviously have much more resources.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- yepthatsreality 5y ago
  I was wondering when you’d get here!
- nofinator 5y ago
  Agreed. But in those cases where I don't like DDG results, I like how I can add "!g" to the end of my search and it redirects the search to Google.
  - slvng 5y ago
    Doing this on mobile is really not fun, I wish it was a simple click in their results UI
    - nickflood 5y ago
      You can do "g!" instead of "!g" on mobile. (And even hn! works, but not every other one.) This helped me considerably
- schleck8 5y ago
  Use whoogle then https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
mastazi 5y ago
AMP is also used in other places e.g. any external links in Twitter when visited on mobile (IIRC)
nabaraz 5y ago
I use Google because i) it displays stock price right on the search page. ii) it does match right on the search page. If DuckDuckGo did smarter results like this, I'd quit Google. Heck I'd even throw in a few bucks.
- rscoots 5y ago
  http://www.startpage.com http://www.startpage.com
  - kyleee 5y ago
    Startpage is no good; sold out to an ad company
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  > I use Google because i) it displays stock price right on the search page. So does DuckDuckGo; here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/6nCNGZk https://imgur.com/a/6nCNGZk > ii) it does match right on the search page. What do you mean by "match" here?
  - nabaraz 5y ago
    Google displays a chart with 1d-1m-ytd etc tabs as well. > match meant to say math.
NoblePublius 5y ago
I have a new laptop on which I set DDG as default and have been tracking myself resorting to Google 50% of the time due to poor results.
wayneftw 5y ago
If you still want to use Google, you can request the desktop site too. No amp links. I don't know how much longer that will continue to work though. Many sites ignore it and show the mobile version anyway.

_tom_ 5y ago

If I trusted an app that I expect has to look at every url I ever visit, $3 is a no-brained.

simonklitj 5y ago
It’s open source. You can even build it yourself it you want to
- teddyh 5y ago
  It’s not open source, it lacks a license entirely. And, therefore, nobody is allowed to build it themselves.
  - simonklitj 5y ago
    You can sure build it, if you want to. And the source is open, so you can check it out. But sure, I’ll cave. What would be a better term for this?
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      Source available?
      - simonklitj 5y ago
        Nice, thanks! Didn’t know that one.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      > You can sure build it, if you want to. I am physically able, yes, but I am not legally allowed to. Since I am not given any permission (i.e. license) to do that. > And the source is open, so you can check it out. The term “open source” is used in two ways: the intelligence community reportedly uses it to refer to information sources which are publicly available, as opposed to secretly gathered information. The other use of the term “open source” is as defined by the OSI, who pioneered this new use. The usual term for source code which is merely available for reading, and not much, if anything, else, is “source-available”¹. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software

throwaway13337 5y ago

I quite like these safari extensions. They almost make up for the forced safari monopoly on iOS (but not really). I use dark reader on chrome for computers. They also have a safari extension that surprisingly works just as well. https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader https://darkreader.org/safari/ https://darkreader.org/safari/ I'm concerned, though, whether these extensions work the same as chrome extensions. Can they view and potentially upload your browser passwords/bank info/etc? Is there some limitation that prevents this in the implementation?

Waterluvian 5y ago
Firefox had amazing support for mobile plugins. I haven’t checked in a while though. I assume Apple doesn’t permit this so you’re kinda limited with an iDevice. (he says from his iPhone)
- zaik 5y ago
  uBlock Origin for Firefox Mobile (Fennec on F-Droid) is a killer feature. I cannot remember the last time I have seen an ad on my phone.
  - Waterluvian 5y ago
    AdGuard (I think?) gets about 80% of them on Safari. But I agree uBlock Origin is amazing. It’s kind of Firefox’s killer feature.
- mastazi 5y ago
  Firefox still supports mobile plugins but, a while ago (IIRC last year), the plugin API changed, as a result currently the selection of available plugins is much smaller than it used to be. I should add that I haven't checked in a few months, maybe it's improved now.
  - m-p-3 5y ago
    Broad addons support is still locked behind the Nightly version, and you gotta do this weird dance to achieve it https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio... Still the same a year later..

CyberDildonics 5y ago

This is an advertisement

gjs278 5y ago
it’s the best advertisement ive ever seen in my life. google can fuck off this is great. I only wish it didn’t make the little puzzle piece appear on the URL bar but it’s a small price to pay.

forrestthewoods 5y ago

Is there a sweet extension that completely blocks all pop-ups for a given domain? Certain webpages hide all kinds of ads and when you click UI buttons it triggers an ad-click. I would like to straight block all of them. Does such a thing exist?

tones411 5y ago
Have you tried any ad blocker extensions to see if they already handle that?

dhsysusbsjsi 5y ago

$4.49 in Australia

arcticbull 5y ago

$3 is an absolute steal. Shut up and take my money!

InvaderFizz 5y ago

Well that was the fastest app purchase I ever made. Never been so happy to fork over $3.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

neil_s 5y ago

Genuine question: what is the advantage to the end user by seeing non-AMP versions of webpages?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mathgorges 5y ago
Just bought it. I think of it as a $3 automated boycott. I don’t like amp for various reasons (not the purpose of this reply) and I expect Google can calculate an AMP bounce rate — they tend to serve ads on the page anyway. This app allows me to communicate with Google in a language they value: data.

KindOne 5y ago

The author of this app made a post on Reddit a few days ago. https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/pvvi83/googles_amp_pageslinks_are_outrageously_annoying/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/pvvi83/googles_amp_p... The program is opensource. https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion

Eric_WVGG 5y ago
Haha. Not only did this individual hate AMP enough to make this extension, so did Joseph Duffy https://twitter.com/joe_duffy/status/1409146065912225794?s=21 https://twitter.com/joe_duffy/status/1409146065912225794?s=2..., and so did I https://twitter.com/eric_wvgg/status/1440688602321621000?s=21 https://twitter.com/eric_wvgg/status/1440688602321621000?s=2...
NmAmDa 5y ago
It's source available but not open source. The license part in the repo README explains that.
- pnt12 5y ago
  The author claims its open source but then explicitly omits a license to the repo, so they are misusing the term.
  - kobayashi 5y ago
    They are not. It’s open sourced, not FOSS
3np 5y ago
Questionable if it was ever really open source, more like "source available". The author has nor removed the source from the repo. Most recent public fork I found is now mirrored here: https://github.com/3nprob/Amplosion https://github.com/3nprob/Amplosion > Safari extensions require your permission to run, so in the interest of transparency I wanted to make the app completely open source. [...] > License: This is open source in the interest of transparency, and I hope this doesn't need to be said but please don't take this as an opportunity to reupload the code and call it your own. This is the equivalent to the GitHub "No License", so you're more than welcome to inspect the code and audit it, but you do not have permission to repurpose it as your own.

jeffrogers 5y ago

Man, I just want a t-shirt with the app icon artwork on it...

smnrchrds 5y ago
It took me a second to realize it is not supposed to be an exploding Winamp logo.

sandworm101 5y ago

This reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson's speeches about race version of street cars: Paying more for less car. Ten thousand dollars more for the same car but without air conditioning. A few thousand more for one without rear seats. Eventually we will we be paying an infinite amount of money for a car that doesn't exist. Three dollars to disable this OS feature. Another three to not use passwords. A few more for bypassing another feature tomorrow. One day we will be paying for an OS that doesn't actually do anything. But isn't that exactly what happens every time I buy a laptop? I am paying for an OS that I am going to bypass/dump/replace the moment I open the box!

koolba 5y ago
It’s not an OS features. AMP links are a Google product that are incredibly annoying. The OS feature being leveraged here is adding a URL scheme handler that routes those annoying AMP links to their actual destination.
aikinai 5y ago
The OS (iOS) and the service you’re paying to modify (Google) are very different, so this analogy doesn’t make any sense. If Apple charged you to not use ScreenTime or something, sure, but that’s not the case.
cunthorpe 5y ago
What he said doesn’t make sense anyway. More is less. Plenty of people pay extra to have a slimmed down version of something, ask Apple users.

tshaddox 5y ago

The best thing about this is that AMP links totally break “open this page in the website’s native app” links, which I encounter frequently, presumably because the browser is on an AMP proxy domain and thus the iOS native app URL listener doesn’t work. It’s absolutely shocking that such a core flow is completely broken by default when you’re coming from Google search results. This app fixes this problem!

JoshTriplett 5y ago
I would happily pay for an Open Source adblocker-style extension that intentionally breaks "do you want to download and install our app instead of using a perfectly reasonable web browser that you're in control of" pop-ups. If I don't already have the app installed, there's a reason for that. (In general, an adblocker is one of the most valuable things I have installed. I wish EasyList had a subscription option; I'd happily pay to help support its maintenance.)
- rosstex 5y ago
  Not always the case. Sometimes I'm looking for something and come across a link to a reddit thread. I'd like to jump to the app easily. What I don't like, however, is how hard websites try to block you from accessing their website without opening the app first.
  - JoshTriplett 5y ago
    That's what I mean. If I have the app installed, I probably want to use it. If I don't have the app installed, I don't want the site trying to push me to install it; I just want the content in my browser tab. And Reddit is indeed one of the worst offenders here.
  - wayouteast 5y ago
    Reddit hard blocks you on some subreddits from the default mobile page. You have to go to the app or go to <subdomain>.reddit.com to bypass the block. Super super super super stupid. Like why block /r/popular from the web and force it to use the app?

tambourine_man 5y ago

I’d pay a good deal of money to have early 2010 style Google back. Mainly: - No AMP - If I quote a string, you better be goddamn sure it’s present on the pages that you show me. - One ad per query. These days the organic results are after the page fold. This is unacceptable for something that’s supposed to be a search engine. —- The second one gets little attention but it’s infuriating to me. I mean, I’m explicitly telling the engine what I want. If it’s not including it in the results, I might as well not even be here typing. Just show me whatever it thinks I want based on everything it knows about me. And no, unfortunately verbatim doesn’t always help.

savanaly 5y ago
By verbatim I assume you mean quoting a string. Example query using that that you consider unsatisfactory?
- matttb 5y ago
  After you do a search there's a 'tools' button. Clicking it gives you a dropdown with the option to change from 'all results' to 'verbatim'. There's also the 'Advanced Search' https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search where even if you enter a word in quotes in the 'this exact word or phrase' box you still get results without your query. I don't have an example query, but it happens all the time. I put a query in quotes and google gives results that neither have the quote in the page blurb on google nor on the destination page.
  - gumby 5y ago
    Having to click around to get a normal search is clearly an anti pattern. Forcing someone to reach for thé mouse rather than simply typing is an insult.
    - joshuaissac 5y ago
      The default search engine can be changed in the browser so that it always invokes Google Search in Verbatim mode. However, there is a side effect that Wikipedia is replaced with strange mirrors in the search results. And some of the desirable fuzzy searching is also lost.

xvilka 5y ago

What's so bad about AMP? If anything, it makes many news sites more "readable", less junk and distraction. Walled garden? Yes, but so is Apple ecosystem, which is this extension for.

wyager 5y ago
Don’t hijack my URLs without my permission. Full stop.
thatswrong0 5y ago
Google should let me fucking disable it without having to rely on a safari extension, because it makes many websites less usable / more broken in many ways. My mobile speeds are fast enough.
valine 5y ago
It’s glitchy, takes up screen real estate, it’s hyper sensitive to horizontal swipes and will sometimes load an unrelated pages, and instantly forgets your cookies and logins (absolutely awful for sites like Reddit where I want to stay logged in). That’s my list anyway.
tambourine_man 5y ago
It stupidly and needlessly reinvents scrolling. By doing so, it completely breaks lots of standard and core browser behaviors, such as: - can’t tap menu bar to scroll back to the very top of the page - can’t find anything on the page because it breaks built in search (unless you’re lucky enough to have the string visible on the viewfinder ) - old man argument, I’ll admit, but I want the site I’m visiting to be the domain I’m seeing in the address bar. This is the Web, not some Google sub domain. - scrolling is janky on older iPhones. Oh, and messes your cookies so you’re never logged in. You need an extra tap to redirect you to the site you actually pay for. And probably a whole lot more I’m not remembering.
q-rews 5y ago
I hate it as much as everyone else, but last time I stripped AMP I got a useless paywalled adridden website so I ended up just sharing the AMP URL

rastafang 5y ago

Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/

vincentmarle 5y ago

I finally upgraded to iOS 15 today just to be able to download this app. That's how much I hate AMP.

ghostly_s 5y ago

Assuming this is a web extension, you'll only be living amp-free in safari. (pretty sure iOS doesnt allow hijacking another domain's universal links?)

q-rews 5y ago
Correct. Some extensions still offer tools via the share dropdown though. This extension could add a “Open without AMP” option in there.
- schleck8 5y ago
  You could just use https://www.amputatorbot.com https://www.amputatorbot.com in this case. The extension's selling point is convenience

bjornstar 5y ago

There's already the Redirect AMP to HTML extension, I use it for both Firefox & Chrome - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-amp-to-html/kifkmmpiicbcnkjaliilaoeaojlldonl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-amp-to-ht...

q-rews 5y ago
The point here is that this can be used on iPhone, so there was not already something there.
- julianlam 5y ago
  ... and in typical Apple fashion, it costs money to get it.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    Yes, damn developers wanting money for their work!
    - julianlam 5y ago
      No, it's not about that, and shame on you for thinking so. It's the plain fact that if this were a problem on Windows or linux, a free script would be available, but because it's Apple, it's a paid plugin or add-on, as it is with everything you need to customise an apple device. It's a matter of developer culture, where you develop things for a fun, and to solve a problem. Not to make a quick buck.

jiggawatts 5y ago

#1 article on the YC News front page. #1 most popular "tools" app in the App Store. Google: Take the hint, please.

franze 5y ago
no, they don't care, this is how the ampthtml-team reacts to criticism https://twitter.com/enzenhofer/status/1442821842050428933 https://twitter.com/enzenhofer/status/1442821842050428933 #blocked

tones411 5y ago

Take my money

halotrope 5y ago

Thank you! If there is one thing where Google went to far its that abomination of bad UX and power abuse called AMP. I was fearing I will never get rid of it on iPhone. Would probably also have paid US$10

unobatbayar 5y ago

The developer who made the app is brilliant. Seems like any App he builds becomes a success. Not sure how he does it.

dqpb 5y ago

So, this happens almost daily: I’ll be reading news in an amp page hosted by Google, which I navigated to via Google news, within Google chrome, and half way through the article the page suddenly breaks and I see “Aw, Snap! Something when wrong while displaying this web page”. There was a time in my life when I believed working for Google was the highest indication of talent. Now, I marvel at how a $1.6 trillion dollar company can’t even serve a page of text and images without fucking it up.

Daneel_ 5y ago

I wonder if Amplosion affects other browsers on iOS too, or does it purely work with Safari? Eg, Chrome or Opera Touch

tediousdemise 5y ago

Thank you for doing this!

oceliker 5y ago

The name of the developer sounded familiar, so I looked him up — turns out he’s the developer of Apollo, likely the best reddit iOS client.

pjdorrell 5y ago

The name reminds me of "DCOMbobulator", another software whose purpose was to turn off something that caused endless trouble and which you never asked for in the first place.

kdunglas 5y ago

While it looks great, this app isn’t open-source. Open-source means that the source code can be freely modified and redistributed. This is explicitly forbidden by the license of Amplosion. The proper term for this kind of licence is “source-available”. The description and the website are misleading and should be updated.

asplake 5y ago

Seriously considering purchasing (I hate AMP with a passion), but what’s the nonsense in the reviews about dogs and games and stuff? I don’t need that kind of distraction.

NmAmDa 5y ago

While the extension source is available. The developer deliberately make it non licensed which means it he retains all copyrights and it is not an open source by any useful mean. And he ia quite aggressive about that. https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion/issues/1 https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion/issues/1

Arnavion 5y ago
I find it weird that both you and TechnologyClassroom in that GitHub issue thread brought up copyright. Even if the developer had used an open source license, they would still have retained copyright. You can complain about the license just fine, but copyright is not relevant to that discussion.
- NmAmDa 5y ago
  The developer in the r/apple subreddit said that it is an open source and a couple of comments here made that claim also. So I was just clarifying. It is more about And to be clear about that. That's from github docs "You're under no obligation to choose a license. However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. If you're creating an open source project, we strongly encourage you to include an open source license" [1] And in the developer last comment in the issue he closed he quoted that also to explain that it is not allowed to do anything except seeing code for transparency purpose. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/licensing-a-repository#choosing-the-right-license https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...

SSLy 5y ago

>Respectfully, I think this fits the colloquial definition of open source that your average person (myself included) views as open source and would recognize, and I'm more than happy with that. Fuck your "colloquial definition"

hyproxia 5y ago
I agree with you, but he's right in a way: The original purpose of "open source" was to dilute the free software movement, so even though the OSI doesn't recognize such licenses as "open source", it's no surprise why the "average person[/developer]" sees it that way.

evanb 5y ago

I'd pay for an app that could do the same for Apple News links.