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Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and tex

Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and text formatting options to annoyances like slow/delayed animations and janky scrolling, there's just a huge lack of thought or polish in Reddit's app. I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow, cluttered, ugly, expensive app.

bcrl 3y ago
They should just buy it from the developer.
- mrcode007 3y ago
  I think this could be an implicit coercion attempt to get the app on the cheap leveraging lack of the alternatives for the developer
- btgeekboy 3y ago
  The irony is they already did that with Alien Blue, and now we’re here.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- stetrain 3y ago
  They already did that kinda. They bought Alien Blue, which was the top iOS Reddit client before Apollo. They brought the dev onboard, sunsetted the Alien Blue app in favor of a new official Reddit mobile app, and gave all of the users who had purchased it a few years of Reddit Gold credit. I think that app may be the basis of the current Reddit app somewhere deep down inside, but it basically bears no resemblance at this point since Reddit's priority is chasing ad revenue and TikTok style feeds instead of just letting people follow and comment in their communities. This of course left a gap for a new good iOS client and Apollo was born. If they bought Apollo I'm sure the same cycle would occur again.
brucethemoose2 3y ago
Thats because Apollo doesn't datamine you to oblivion, or madly optimize for engagement. If Reddit adopted Apollo, they would slow it to a messy crawl in 6 months.
ericmcer 3y ago
They probably have totally different priorities. Apollos only goal is good UI/UX. Reddits is tracking, Ad revenue, prioritizing cached content and who knows what other priorities have been pushed into it.
- mattrick 3y ago
  If their priority is to make money, why wouldn’t they invest in the UX their official app. It’s probably their main revenue stream but it’s so bad that it drives users away to third party clients they can’t monetize. Now instead of actually investing in making their app better and giving users a reason to go back to it they’re blocking third party clients so they don’t need to actually improve their app. It’s a lose-lose for their users and it reflects very poorly on them. Also it’s not like Reddit doesn’t have the resources to both improve their apps usability and focus on tracking, ad revenue, etc.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
jraby3 3y ago
I read someone else’s opinion on a separate hacker news thread saying they thought the reason for the increase was because of AI and LLMs. Twitter recently did something similar. Not sure if it’s true but it struck me as making sense. The timing is too coincidental.
ranger_danger 3y ago
The amount of people that still have no idea how to either download video posts or have sound enabled while playing the video... are astonishing.
kentm 3y ago
Even old.reddit.com has gotten bad. I have an annoying persistent problem that ads auto-play with sound, despite being disabled in my Reddit options and in my browser options. I've re-enabled and re-disabled all of these options and it still happens. They (Reddit) claim that this is not expected behavior. Some other people have also reported this. No fixes.
- memalign 3y ago
  I wonder if old.reddit.com is a freeze-dried old codebase in maintenance mode. If so, I would expect it to get worse over time, broken by accident, never prioritized to be fixed.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    It is. There are several issues already.
czinck 3y ago
Reddit's problems aren't because of their technology, it's product decisions. Yeah, sure, maybe all their devs suck, but it was managements decision to create the abomination of their new layout to be more instagram-like. Devs aren't putting a million nags to use the official app on their mobile site of their own accord. Devs aren't consistently ignoring moderator issues/complaints. Maybe their devs are jealous of what one guy with freedom to actually create the best thing he can can do, but I really doubt they came up with the idea to charge 100x what imgur charges for similar API calls.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gremlinsinc 3y ago
One guy ? Try ten different or more, from Apollo to Relay to BaconReader every damn one of them is better by a factor of 10x or more than the reddit app, which probably took a team of 20 six months.

bcrl 3y ago

They should just buy it from the developer.

mrcode007 3y ago
I think this could be an implicit coercion attempt to get the app on the cheap leveraging lack of the alternatives for the developer
btgeekboy 3y ago
The irony is they already did that with Alien Blue, and now we’re here.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
stetrain 3y ago
They already did that kinda. They bought Alien Blue, which was the top iOS Reddit client before Apollo. They brought the dev onboard, sunsetted the Alien Blue app in favor of a new official Reddit mobile app, and gave all of the users who had purchased it a few years of Reddit Gold credit. I think that app may be the basis of the current Reddit app somewhere deep down inside, but it basically bears no resemblance at this point since Reddit's priority is chasing ad revenue and TikTok style feeds instead of just letting people follow and comment in their communities. This of course left a gap for a new good iOS client and Apollo was born. If they bought Apollo I'm sure the same cycle would occur again.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

Thats because Apollo doesn't datamine you to oblivion, or madly optimize for engagement. If Reddit adopted Apollo, they would slow it to a messy crawl in 6 months.

ericmcer 3y ago

They probably have totally different priorities. Apollos only goal is good UI/UX. Reddits is tracking, Ad revenue, prioritizing cached content and who knows what other priorities have been pushed into it.

mattrick 3y ago
If their priority is to make money, why wouldn’t they invest in the UX their official app. It’s probably their main revenue stream but it’s so bad that it drives users away to third party clients they can’t monetize. Now instead of actually investing in making their app better and giving users a reason to go back to it they’re blocking third party clients so they don’t need to actually improve their app. It’s a lose-lose for their users and it reflects very poorly on them. Also it’s not like Reddit doesn’t have the resources to both improve their apps usability and focus on tracking, ad revenue, etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

jraby3 3y ago

I read someone else’s opinion on a separate hacker news thread saying they thought the reason for the increase was because of AI and LLMs. Twitter recently did something similar. Not sure if it’s true but it struck me as making sense. The timing is too coincidental.

ranger_danger 3y ago

The amount of people that still have no idea how to either download video posts or have sound enabled while playing the video... are astonishing.

kentm 3y ago

Even old.reddit.com has gotten bad. I have an annoying persistent problem that ads auto-play with sound, despite being disabled in my Reddit options and in my browser options. I've re-enabled and re-disabled all of these options and it still happens. They (Reddit) claim that this is not expected behavior. Some other people have also reported this. No fixes.

memalign 3y ago
I wonder if old.reddit.com is a freeze-dried old codebase in maintenance mode. If so, I would expect it to get worse over time, broken by accident, never prioritized to be fixed.
- Semaphor 3y ago
  It is. There are several issues already.

czinck 3y ago

Reddit's problems aren't because of their technology, it's product decisions. Yeah, sure, maybe all their devs suck, but it was managements decision to create the abomination of their new layout to be more instagram-like. Devs aren't putting a million nags to use the official app on their mobile site of their own accord. Devs aren't consistently ignoring moderator issues/complaints. Maybe their devs are jealous of what one guy with freedom to actually create the best thing he can can do, but I really doubt they came up with the idea to charge 100x what imgur charges for similar API calls.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gremlinsinc 3y ago

One guy ? Try ten different or more, from Apollo to Relay to BaconReader every damn one of them is better by a factor of 10x or more than the reddit app, which probably took a team of 20 six months.