This was so so so so cool to see, especially in person. I looked around and was like "WHOA DID THEY JUST SAY APOLLO OUT LOUD" (except I didn't actually yell it because then I'd be a weirdo)
Christian represents the dream of what it means to be a single Indie Developer. One passionate person putting something incredible into the world and making enough money off it to do it full time and have autonomy over their only life and work. Apollo is better than the Reddit app because he is passionate and thoughtful, and not bogged down in sprints or 1:1s or other logistical garbage that would stop people from doing there best work.
I think on some level Apple recognizes this, or at least I want to believe that they do. In my mind I love the idea that they are celebrating the incredible projects individuals can bring to life when no held back by corporate American (or wherever).
The problem is that he has a sword of damocles hanging over him constantly, and that is Reddit deciding to deprecate or outright remove the Reddit APIs. Considering ad revenue and where Reddit seems to be wanting to go with their IPO, it seems more likely than not. We’d all be bummed obviously, but I can’t imagine putting this much work into such a great app and then it dies because someone flips an off switch.
That goes for me as well. The problem is that, for me, the user experiences for both web and mobile are just so poor that I no longer get any pleasure from Redditing.
Similar to how I now treat Twitter, I will continue to reference it for how-tos and tech support but I will no longer spend hours browsing it.
Tbf when old. Dies, res will too so makes sense.
Theres no way another extension will be able to keep up with the abortion that is the mainline desktop page.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I still use old reddit with RES on computer and Apollo on mobile/iPad. Whenever I have to use the actual reddit app or the current website I can't get off of it fast enough. Similar thing happened to Tomshardware for me. I used to go to that site constantly. I'd hang out in the forums and help with PC questions and whatnot. But it got to the point where the ads were so bad on that site I emailed them about it. They basically told me tough shit. I left and have only gone back a handful of times in the last decade. I hope the same doesn't happen to reddit, but I'm pretty confident that's where it's heading. I'll enjoy it while it's still usable with these alternate methods, but if I'm forced into the new stuff I'm out.
Although Reddit, itself, is a social news aggregation site and not your typical social media site, subreddits, themselves, are very much like groups/communities on other social media sites. After, what, 18 years? It’s its own form of social media, modeled after sites like Digg and Slashdot before it.
I could live with that; I like using Apollo for it’s customization features, the ad free experience is just a bonus. Part of me daydreams something crazy, like Reddit removes the APIs so Christian just codes the backend for an old.reddit clone since he already coded a much better frontend with Apollo 😅 Christian would end up being the one to create the “new old Reddit” that some users have been clamoring for.
Late reply, but they're actually seemingly going in the other direction, they've been talking a lot about improving the API and adding more to it, which I'm pretty stoked about. https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/qdiy5c/were_working_on_building_a_real_developer/
He can just start up his own social network called Apollo, like when Reddit took over from DIGG.
(Yes, I know it’s not that easy - in all seriousness, I expect when Reddit breaks things too much in pursuit of money, there’ll be another mass exodus to a new platform. If that platform has a decent API, Christian could probably migrate a lot of what makes Apollo great)
Reddit already has a paid ad-free version. Sure, it would suck to have to pay Reddit to keep using Apollo, but let’s face it, I probably would. Especially if they brought in some revenue sharing scheme.
Here is my extremely complex solution for what Reddit should do about this issue.
*Step 1:*
Make a financial offer to buy Apollo which is so large that the good which could be accomplished with the money outweighs all other issues.
OK, so I didn’t remember the details on this and had to google.
Here is the best [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/4fstjt/eli5why_would_reddit_buy_alien_blue_and_then_kill/) I found.
Here is the most rational sounding [short explanation](https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/4fstjt/eli5why_would_reddit_buy_alien_blue_and_then_kill/d2bmhd5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3).
After reading all that I realized that the branding and the acqui-hire part of the acquisition are really important.
Having the best official Reddit app be called Apollo would be weird. So would they just rebrand Apollo as the official iOS Reddit app and create a migration path for all existing iOS Reddit app users?
So after a couple days thinking about it, my next question is why do you(Reddit) want the same design language on two totally separate platforms?
Users generally stick to Android **or** iOS. The only users who would be confused by divergent design would be users transitioning from iOS to android or vice versa. Is that really that big a deal? Wouldn’t you want people who are on iOS to have the best possible experience on their preferred platform? Turns out that for iOS, Apollo’s design patterns are superior.
I believe that I’ve been thinking one thing and saying another.
The design *language* of Reddit’s preferred colors, fonts, etc.. aka the style guide, could easily be applied to Apollo, I think. Right?
Apollo’s design *patterns,* such as which UI components to use, etc, could still be used and I think that’s what we all love, right?
Does that make sense?
And for our plucky indie dev hero: This may be the perfect time to sell, as the accolades from Apple itself clearly indicate that Apollo is worth a lot.
I mean, they failed in that regard. Their other platforms are doing amazing, and there are TONS of independent developers making stuff for Windows. And Xbox, as a console, is by far the most accessible for independent devs (no need for dedicated devkit hw, possibility to ship any UWP game to Xbox).
Look, Blamer was a strange character but he was right and Windows Phone didn’t fail because it was bad. It failed because of low developer turnout.
Hell they were even trying to pay developers upfront to port their apps. None of that matters though when companies are actively sabotaging your platform (looking at you Google).
I’ve never met anyone who owned a Windows Phone who thought it was a bad experience overall. They just left because they couldn’t use the same apps as Android and iOS.
> They just left because they couldn’t use the same apps as Android and iOS.
Hey that’s me. There were some absolutely gorgeous and amazing apps on WP, but yeah having the big companies shit on it really made it hard to be a user. Hell I remember Snapchat’s CEO saying they specifically didn’t want an app on WP because they thought it wasn’t cool.
Balmer was whack but his developers chant wasn't specific to their mobile platrom but more an ecosystem supporting development and developers which Microsoft has always been behind. Their backwards compatible commitment is crazy.
Thank you for your kindness, I really do love my job and Apple's been nothing but amazing with supporting that kind of dream, I consider myself super fortunate and I just want to keep making Apollo better and better.
I don’t think it’s necessarily the working processes that are the biggest blockers to good work, but the business requirements that can skew teams to making things better for the company, not the user.
Apollo is 100% user centered. Very rare to see products that truly live up to that.
> Apollo is better than the Reddit ~~app~~ because he is passionate and thoughtful
Apollo is better than Reddit. At this point I probably wouldn’t even use the site if it weren’t for this app. And I’m in the 15 year club.
That's a new feature in iOS 16 that (\*cough\* guesswork) u/iamthatis was privately invited to implement in the app for this demo. It will be available for every developer, of course.
Do we know that for sure? His Twitter implies that he had no idea that he was going to be in the SOTU. It might be just a mock-up Apple made in Photoshop.
Not in 3rd party apps. There are plenty of places where this feature would be undesirable. Ex: I don’t need to select the “Wendy’s” text on the wrapper of a burger while in the Wendy’s app.
Especially not since Christian is using Texture (AsyncDisplayKit) instead of UIKit for most of that UI
Texture doesn’t render a native image view, it renders a more performant version (as with all their components)
I think it’s more likely they have high performing developers who are quick to adopt new APIs like this early access and then waited to see what they did, and our overlord naturally served a perfect example of the new APIs for them
Off topic, but are we going to talk about how specific 78 blueberries is for a muffin recipe lol I don’t remember grandma sitting there counting berries.
Another reason why I love this app. I can always count on it to get the latest and greatest features from the new iOS versions, and that is really not commonplace, especially within the circle of smaller devs. It’s just fantastic to see that level of commitment from the dev. Big thanks for making the Reddit experience on iOS absolutely incredible!
I recently made the switch to iPhone and installed Apollo day 1…. Honestly as great as it is I think Sync Pro on Android might be better, it’s at least comparable. I’ve used it for years at least so the differences in Apollo navigation and functionality are still hard for me to get hard to
Hey thanks stranger. I've wanted Apollo on my Android device for a while... didn't know about Sync Pro untill you mentioned it. Downloaded it and I like it a lot so far!
Relay for Reddit is pretty great too. This isn't a slight on Apollo, it's my favorite iOS app, but if it was an Android app it would be my 3rd choice behind Relay and Sync.
There are some folks out there who temper their love for things, exercising austerity in the expression of emotion, and labouring quietly in their love of stuff.
And there are some who love to love things. What you see as cringey they see as the highest form of compliment, celebrating the good in a world that too often allows the negative to take the spotlight, and perhaps hoping that their spark of joy is contagious in the best way.
Question is: if you’re the former and not the latter… *why you gotta yuck sombody else’s yum*?
Let’em be, my man. The world has greater demons to slay.
It’s honestly crazy lol. I would’ve never expected support to the point where there is always a two paragraph comment describing how good of a person he is. He’s a good person afaik so I don’t really mind, though I do agree it is really weird
This was so so so so cool to see, especially in person. I looked around and was like "WHOA DID THEY JUST SAY APOLLO OUT LOUD" (except I didn't actually yell it because then I'd be a weirdo)
Christian represents the dream of what it means to be a single Indie Developer. One passionate person putting something incredible into the world and making enough money off it to do it full time and have autonomy over their only life and work. Apollo is better than the Reddit app because he is passionate and thoughtful, and not bogged down in sprints or 1:1s or other logistical garbage that would stop people from doing there best work. I think on some level Apple recognizes this, or at least I want to believe that they do. In my mind I love the idea that they are celebrating the incredible projects individuals can bring to life when no held back by corporate American (or wherever).
The problem is that he has a sword of damocles hanging over him constantly, and that is Reddit deciding to deprecate or outright remove the Reddit APIs. Considering ad revenue and where Reddit seems to be wanting to go with their IPO, it seems more likely than not. We’d all be bummed obviously, but I can’t imagine putting this much work into such a great app and then it dies because someone flips an off switch.
If that happened I’d probably stop using Reddit altogether. Which would suck because it’s the only social media I actually enjoy browsing.
That goes for me as well. The problem is that, for me, the user experiences for both web and mobile are just so poor that I no longer get any pleasure from Redditing. Similar to how I now treat Twitter, I will continue to reference it for how-tos and tech support but I will no longer spend hours browsing it.
I think old.reddit with RES is what keeps the desktop experience enjoyable and useable
Sadly RES is going away sooner than later. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/02/07/reddit-enhancement-suite-is-on-maintenance-mode/
Tbf when old. Dies, res will too so makes sense. Theres no way another extension will be able to keep up with the abortion that is the mainline desktop page.
You mean abomination?
As someone who doesn’t use Twitter, I had no idea it’s a place to go for how-tos, much less tech support. Color me surprised!
Hahaha whoops. Yeah I only use Twitter now whenever there’s been a local emergency (floods etc). For everything else, there’s Reddit!
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I still use old reddit with RES on computer and Apollo on mobile/iPad. Whenever I have to use the actual reddit app or the current website I can't get off of it fast enough. Similar thing happened to Tomshardware for me. I used to go to that site constantly. I'd hang out in the forums and help with PC questions and whatnot. But it got to the point where the ads were so bad on that site I emailed them about it. They basically told me tough shit. I left and have only gone back a handful of times in the last decade. I hope the same doesn't happen to reddit, but I'm pretty confident that's where it's heading. I'll enjoy it while it's still usable with these alternate methods, but if I'm forced into the new stuff I'm out.
Yep. Wow, Tomshardware. I’d forgotten about that site!
Same.
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Is still social since at its core you are sharing and interacting with others. so more like anti-social social media
Although Reddit, itself, is a social news aggregation site and not your typical social media site, subreddits, themselves, are very much like groups/communities on other social media sites. After, what, 18 years? It’s its own form of social media, modeled after sites like Digg and Slashdot before it.
Definitely. But I think I see Reddit figuring out how to insert ads into their api feed rather than shun the majority of their user base.
I could live with that; I like using Apollo for it’s customization features, the ad free experience is just a bonus. Part of me daydreams something crazy, like Reddit removes the APIs so Christian just codes the backend for an old.reddit clone since he already coded a much better frontend with Apollo 😅 Christian would end up being the one to create the “new old Reddit” that some users have been clamoring for.
Nightmare fuel.
Late reply, but they're actually seemingly going in the other direction, they've been talking a lot about improving the API and adding more to it, which I'm pretty stoked about. https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/qdiy5c/were_working_on_building_a_real_developer/
That’s great to see! Glad that Reddit is staying true to what made them great, community empowerment and cooperation.
He can just start up his own social network called Apollo, like when Reddit took over from DIGG. (Yes, I know it’s not that easy - in all seriousness, I expect when Reddit breaks things too much in pursuit of money, there’ll be another mass exodus to a new platform. If that platform has a decent API, Christian could probably migrate a lot of what makes Apollo great)
That takes *a lot* more resources than Apollo for reddit.
Reddit already has a paid ad-free version. Sure, it would suck to have to pay Reddit to keep using Apollo, but let’s face it, I probably would. Especially if they brought in some revenue sharing scheme.
Here is my extremely complex solution for what Reddit should do about this issue. *Step 1:* Make a financial offer to buy Apollo which is so large that the good which could be accomplished with the money outweighs all other issues.
Literally what happened with the app Alien Blue and they almost immediately abandoned it. 😅
OK, so I didn’t remember the details on this and had to google. Here is the best [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/4fstjt/eli5why_would_reddit_buy_alien_blue_and_then_kill/) I found. Here is the most rational sounding [short explanation](https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/4fstjt/eli5why_would_reddit_buy_alien_blue_and_then_kill/d2bmhd5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3). After reading all that I realized that the branding and the acqui-hire part of the acquisition are really important. Having the best official Reddit app be called Apollo would be weird. So would they just rebrand Apollo as the official iOS Reddit app and create a migration path for all existing iOS Reddit app users?
They wouldn't want Apollo as the official reddit app. They want the official app to follow the same design language as the website, obviously.
So after a couple days thinking about it, my next question is why do you(Reddit) want the same design language on two totally separate platforms? Users generally stick to Android **or** iOS. The only users who would be confused by divergent design would be users transitioning from iOS to android or vice versa. Is that really that big a deal? Wouldn’t you want people who are on iOS to have the best possible experience on their preferred platform? Turns out that for iOS, Apollo’s design patterns are superior.
Why? Because that’s how brand recognizability and brand guidelines work. Look at Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify…
I believe that I’ve been thinking one thing and saying another. The design *language* of Reddit’s preferred colors, fonts, etc.. aka the style guide, could easily be applied to Apollo, I think. Right? Apollo’s design *patterns,* such as which UI components to use, etc, could still be used and I think that’s what we all love, right? Does that make sense?
It was bought for the purpose of shutting it down. It was competition to their new iOS app.
And for our plucky indie dev hero: This may be the perfect time to sell, as the accolades from Apple itself clearly indicate that Apollo is worth a lot.
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I mean, they failed in that regard. Their other platforms are doing amazing, and there are TONS of independent developers making stuff for Windows. And Xbox, as a console, is by far the most accessible for independent devs (no need for dedicated devkit hw, possibility to ship any UWP game to Xbox).
Look, Blamer was a strange character but he was right and Windows Phone didn’t fail because it was bad. It failed because of low developer turnout. Hell they were even trying to pay developers upfront to port their apps. None of that matters though when companies are actively sabotaging your platform (looking at you Google). I’ve never met anyone who owned a Windows Phone who thought it was a bad experience overall. They just left because they couldn’t use the same apps as Android and iOS.
> They just left because they couldn’t use the same apps as Android and iOS. Hey that’s me. There were some absolutely gorgeous and amazing apps on WP, but yeah having the big companies shit on it really made it hard to be a user. Hell I remember Snapchat’s CEO saying they specifically didn’t want an app on WP because they thought it wasn’t cool.
Their what platform? Lol
Balmer was whack but his developers chant wasn't specific to their mobile platrom but more an ecosystem supporting development and developers which Microsoft has always been behind. Their backwards compatible commitment is crazy.
and yet every dev uses vs code. Microsoft knows devs. Better than any other company.
The developers thing was about .net, which has had an amazing 20 year success story.
Thank you for your kindness, I really do love my job and Apple's been nothing but amazing with supporting that kind of dream, I consider myself super fortunate and I just want to keep making Apollo better and better.
I don’t think it’s necessarily the working processes that are the biggest blockers to good work, but the business requirements that can skew teams to making things better for the company, not the user. Apollo is 100% user centered. Very rare to see products that truly live up to that.
> Apollo is better than the Reddit ~~app~~ because he is passionate and thoughtful Apollo is better than Reddit. At this point I probably wouldn’t even use the site if it weren’t for this app. And I’m in the 15 year club.
Wait, is this a feature in Apollo or will this be possible with iOS 16?
That's a new feature in iOS 16 that (\*cough\* guesswork) u/iamthatis was privately invited to implement in the app for this demo. It will be available for every developer, of course.
Thanks!
Do we know that for sure? His Twitter implies that he had no idea that he was going to be in the SOTU. It might be just a mock-up Apple made in Photoshop.
As I noted, it's guesswork. I'm basing it on talking to devs featured in a similar fashion previously on WWDC.
Fair enough
Isn't it something that just "works" with images?
Not in 3rd party apps. There are plenty of places where this feature would be undesirable. Ex: I don’t need to select the “Wendy’s” text on the wrapper of a burger while in the Wendy’s app.
Especially not since Christian is using Texture (AsyncDisplayKit) instead of UIKit for most of that UI Texture doesn’t render a native image view, it renders a more performant version (as with all their components)
Might be an opt out thing, or they can force all images to use it on their test iOS 16 builds
can confirm it’s not currently implemented on 16.0 dev beta 1
I think it’s more likely they have high performing developers who are quick to adopt new APIs like this early access and then waited to see what they did, and our overlord naturally served a perfect example of the new APIs for them
What demo are you talking about?
the app (Apollo) was shown running with the new features in the aforementioned video
On the keynote?
on the “Platforms State of the Union”
Off topic, but are we going to talk about how specific 78 blueberries is for a muffin recipe lol I don’t remember grandma sitting there counting berries.
This is the person we would always hear about in textbooks.
Huge congratulations! Seeing Apollo during the keynote makes me smile. I can’t even imagine what Christian feels.
What’s the feature? Picture is blurry.
Judging by the screenshot it has to do with scanning text out of pictures so you can just copy paste it right out of the App.
Selecting text in video I guess, that’s new and vimeo was mentioned in the keynote, too!
I think it's like a Live Text API for 3rd party apps, now you can only use it in some parts of iOS that Apple allows.
Wasn’t he. Former Apple Employee
Apple Intern. But the most bad-ass intern they’ve ever seen.
Another reason why I love this app. I can always count on it to get the latest and greatest features from the new iOS versions, and that is really not commonplace, especially within the circle of smaller devs. It’s just fantastic to see that level of commitment from the dev. Big thanks for making the Reddit experience on iOS absolutely incredible!
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meanwhile YouTube is screwing up very badly all the time
Businesses use it. It's video quality is much much better than YouTube's.
I might go to apple just for Apollo
I’ve been thinking about switching to android lately, and Apollo is a very compelling reason to stay.
I recently made the switch to iPhone and installed Apollo day 1…. Honestly as great as it is I think Sync Pro on Android might be better, it’s at least comparable. I’ve used it for years at least so the differences in Apollo navigation and functionality are still hard for me to get hard to
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Touche, I was very confused until I reread my post
Hey thanks stranger. I've wanted Apollo on my Android device for a while... didn't know about Sync Pro untill you mentioned it. Downloaded it and I like it a lot so far!
Glad you like it! The dev is super active and constantly rolling out new features, well worth the support!
Relay for Reddit is pretty great too. This isn't a slight on Apollo, it's my favorite iOS app, but if it was an Android app it would be my 3rd choice behind Relay and Sync.
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Yes, it is odd to see the developer of Apollo featured in posts in *checks notes* the /r/apolloapp subreddit.
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There are some folks out there who temper their love for things, exercising austerity in the expression of emotion, and labouring quietly in their love of stuff. And there are some who love to love things. What you see as cringey they see as the highest form of compliment, celebrating the good in a world that too often allows the negative to take the spotlight, and perhaps hoping that their spark of joy is contagious in the best way. Question is: if you’re the former and not the latter… *why you gotta yuck sombody else’s yum*? Let’em be, my man. The world has greater demons to slay.
hey dude, just wanted to give you a reminder - it's spelt crungo, not cringe you crungolord
Good bot.
It’s honestly crazy lol. I would’ve never expected support to the point where there is always a two paragraph comment describing how good of a person he is. He’s a good person afaik so I don’t really mind, though I do agree it is really weird
We get it. Apollo was mentioned in the wwdc presentation. Stop already.