Looks like theres a final surprise in the form of a song in Apollo now that it’s closed.
Can anyone identify the artist?
EDIT: someone managed to find it. From Christian’s YouTube page:
A fun parody of Sarah McLachlan’s I Will Remember You performed by the incredible Zoe Wynns
There are now in total 26 wallpapers per platform (iPhone, iPad, Mac) up for download.
I’m so glad the icon artists are helping out. It’s quite inspiring that Christian has managed to bring so many different talents together in the last few weeks.
Originally by Sarah McLachlan.
Someone managed to find a video of the song.
How about instead of wasting time circle jerking in your 10 minutes of fame, you dedicate a few hours to add Lemmy/kbin/mastodon/whatever support to Apollo and actually support your users?
Although wefwef pretty much completely fills the gap left by Apollo, it still annoys me to see the way this guy is handling this situation. Not only is he doing jack shit to support his loyal longtime users, he went through the effort of updating the app to beg people not to refund the subscription.
/end rant
My guy, it takes way way way more than a few hours to “add support”. You make it sound as if it’s so easy.
He spent years building that app, improving it, only to have the rug pulled out from under him. I’m sure any developer would be pretty distraught by such an event. I know I’d be.
Some people non-ironically think that all he needs to do is CMD F “Reddit” and change it to “Lemmy” in the app’s code, and all the functionality would be there.
Yup. And it’s frustrating. The level of entitlement!
I hope he considers developing for Lemmy/Kbin and the fediverse more generally.
Glad this is downvoted. It takes way more than a couple of hours to completely change your apps backend to read from a completely different website’s API. And that’s not even thinking of how complicated dealing with the fediverse is, dealing with multiple domains and logging in through multiple fediverses.
The guy doesn’t owe you anything. Please be quiet.
I recommended his app to people, I paid for the subscription, I left a positive review on the appstore. I was a loyal user for a long time.
In the end, he tried (and fortunately failed) to sell Apollo to reddit, then just killed the app when that didn’t work. If he did care about users (aka the people that made him a lot of money), he could’ve sold the app to someone willing to continue it, or at least released it as open source.
It’s not the end of the world, and he didn’t eat a newborn baby or anything like that, but I don’t think people should be patting this guy on the back for the way he handled this. He just took the money and ran, abandoning his customers in the process. That’s not the type of business I want to support.
Reality check: vast majority of the people don’t give a shit what you or I do.
I am a day 1 user, bought lifetime pro within the month, and lifetime ultra on launch. I recommended the app to people. And guess what? No one gives a shit about me nor my recommendations. They’ve got their use out of the app; they’re happy that they’ve got a better Reddit experience while they were able to use the app; and now that the app is no more, they can be their own grown ass adults and decide what to do about the situation.
The app is down, due to no fault of the developer, and that’s that. And no, the developer didn’t take your money and ran with it. He’s offering refund for the unused subscription portion which yields a net deficit of estimated 250K USD that he will have to pay back to Apple after Apple Pay’s out people who doesn’t opt out. Given the situation, do you have 250K USD liquid cash to pay Apple on a 30 days notice, or would you rather ask nicely for some to choose to opt out of the refund? Because if you don’t, then maybe you shouldn’t be whining about your $13/yr subscription that you’re getting your prorated refund by choosing to not opt out.
The “bad guy” of the story is Reddit’s management. Not even so much for their goal of killing third party apps — their platform, their rules, that’s why we’re no longer on their platforms, and no longer playing by their rules — but rather their approach to the problem every step of the way. They could’ve announced a longer run way — “Starting 2024/01/01…” would’ve gave Christian (and other app devs) ample time to pivot and update their subscription model to make it work; limiting the maximum number of users (a-la Twitter in mid 2010s), however bad, would’ve still allowed the app to continue to exist. Demanding $20M/year on a 30 days notice, slander the devs, and actively suppress the entire moderation and user community? Bold move Reddit, let’s see how this will play out in a couple of months. Third party apps are likely but the first casualties of their decisions to implement this change.
It’s not that hard to understand that the price he pitched to Reddit was simply a way to show how outrageous it was. All he did was simply say okay you are charging me x per month so then you are evaluating my app at x dollars. Since the amount he offered was very low compared to “long term evaluation” just to show how stupid they are.
So what this dude didn’t sell off his app to someone else? He has been making that app for a decade. If he was just trying to sell it like you’re implying then he easily could have. He was making a point.
Imagine you worked on something you loved for a decade and then out of nowhere it got ripped out from under you and it wasn’t usable or financially responsible to keep it going. Would you just go off and sell whatever it was or be like “hmm… maybe I should keep this since I’ve spent so many years on it and adored it. I could also just take a step back and relax before thinking about a way I could make it work”.
It’s this thing called having empathy for other people and understanding how having something like that happen could discourage you and make you want to just take a bit to yourself without immediately thinking about the next step.
Don’t make sense why you are so up in arms about people having empathy and respecting the decisions the dev made.
What most people missed, much less understood, from that interaction is that Reddit justified the API cost based on “opportunity cost”.
This means that Reddit was saying that they weren’t trying to kill off third party apps but that they simply were trying to charge $20MM/y to recoup the earnings they’re losing out on by virtue of people using Apollo instead of Reddit’s own offerings.
So yeah, like you said, he clearly tried to call BS on the price motivation by essentially saying “if my mere existence is causing you to lose out on $20MM/y of earnings, why don’t you cut a check for $10MM to buy Apollo”.
Because logically if it really was about opportunity cost and the pricing of $20MM/y would accurately reflect that, then a one time $10MM purchase would be such a steal compared to losing $20MM/y, it would have any CEO scrambling to sign a check the moment the option was even so much as whispered.
Instead the API pricing was simply a ploy to kill off third party apps and the “opportunity cost” nonsense was mere pretext to be able to maintain that it wasn’t about killing off third party apps.
Not to mention that outside of the vacuum of this specific matter, the whole ordeal was littered with duplicitous lies, like how it would be a fair and reasonable price when every other comparable API is multiple orders of magnitude cheaper, safe for Muskrat’s.
Imgur for example would charge $166/50 million request, compared to Reddit’s $12,000 for the same amount. Or put it differently, Imgur charges $276,666/y compared to Reddit’s $20MM/y.
I think he needs a break from all this before even thinking about building a new app. Having your work basically get tarnished in front of you, then being dragged through the mud by an arrogant brat in power who was obviously lying to and about you, having to deal with the refund process, that’s gonna take a toll on anyone’s mental health.
I do hope he can make an Apollo for the federated alternatives like Lemmy and Kbin, but like I said, he needs to sort the closure of Apollo out before even thinking on any new apps.
Honestly as much as I want Christian to push his app to lemmy as I used Apollo for barely under a year and loved it the man deserves a break
Someone in the Apollo sun said it’s like watching a great mobile home that has great amenities and features and great memories and then watching someone drive it off the Grand Canyon and light it on fire
Agreed. I remember reading on his Mastodon that he was feeling stressed about it all. Between that and the sadness of having years’ worth of work gone, yeah. He deserves the break. That person summed it up pretty well.
(On that note, Tom Scott just published a video about his 3 month break in 2024)
I honestly hope Christian is ok yk
Like I said I want him on all but I was crying this morning before work and last night I got the $5 wall paper pack and declined my refund for ultra I can’t imagine the gut punch it is for him
Same. I got Ultra, the wallpaper pack, declined the refund too. I’ve been feeling a lot of grief which feels weird for an app, but I just gotta let my feelings do the works I guess. :V
Haha yeah, what an asshole deciding himself what to work on and not humbly serve some strangers on the internet :D
He created Apollo, because he was a reddit user and wanted a mobile app that didn’t suck. So he created one of his own.
He’s not (yet?) a lemmy or kbin user. So he has no need for an app here.
There are plenty other developersp here that do use lemmy/kbin and are busy with creating apps for those platforms. How about you support those other developers instead of complaining that this one developer isn’t doing what you want him to do.
Also, he didn’t try to sell Apollo. He was making a point how ridiculous the API charges were.
Idk. I think he tried his best behind the scenes and publicly. Regardless of how it ended, I think he watched a nearly decade-long passion project he built effectively on his own get torched due to corpo decisions out of his control. Tbth, I don’t doubt he didn’t want to repurpose the app for a plethora of legal (app store, subscriptions, etc) reasons - but he’s probably exhausted.
At least, I know I’d be.
Yikes, dude. He doesn’t owe you (or any of us) anything.
Yeah, how dare he, after almost a decade of work, refuse to get back into the code mines at your whim and repurpose the app super easy in “a few hours”.
/s
Get a grip.
Not only would it take far more than “a few hours”, he owes you jack all.
Even if he would be interested in making a Lemmy app, he’d be well within his right to take a break from things.
Tell me you know nothing about building software without telling me you know nothing about building software.
Found Spez’s Lemmy account!
That a threat?
Don’t worry I got your reference
There was a song? Dang, I just opened it, said yep it’s blank and that’s fucked up. Then I sadly deleted it and opened up memmy.
Fellow Memmy user I wonder if any inspiration was taken from Apollo, surely there isn’t an nod to the best theme (sunset) with Christian mentioned by name
Also can we customize gestures yet or no
The memmy developer is pretty available. He answers lots of questions and implements ideas at break neck speed. Come on in!
The memmy developer is pretty available. He answers lots of questions and implements ideas at break neck speed. Come on in!
Sweet
You can listen to the song on his YouTube channel as well: https://youtu.be/KOFChFxsJ3I
Question. Who owns these lemmy sites? I understand it’s decentralized. Can someone breakdown exactly what that means? Who, if anyone, owns these sites/servers, how it all works?
Can be anyone. You download the software and put it on a server. Can be bare metal in your bedroom or a VM on Amazon Web Services. Individual/enthusiast owned, corporate owned, it’s open to anyone to host an instance.
Anyone can make their own server. Then those server talk to each other to share the posts, comments and votes. You are on lemm.ee, I’m on lemmy.one, different owner, slightly different rules, but we see the same stuff
Ok so each person hosts their own server, and thus pays for the server? Something along those lines?
Yes, each server has its own financing.
Genuine question: Why would anyone be inclined to host a server? Do they get anything out of it?
Could be a multitude of reasons. Some people just really enjoy sysadmin work, some maybe want to play around with the software. Places like Beehaw have a goal of creating what they consider to be an open and welcoming community. Some even have nefarious reasons for hosting (luckily we have defederation).
I just think it’s neat lmao
It’s not very expensive yet as I have under 100 users, if it gets more expensive I’ll ask for donations. If that doesn’t cover it, I’ll just stop letting new people register
Normally they can talk to each other and share posts/comments. That’s the so call federated. Unless, it’s beehaw and world. Those two aren’t talking. So beehaw is not federated.
Image Transcription: Image with Text:
[The mascot icon for the app ‘Apollo for Reddit’, a small cartoon-style astronaut’s head, is shown smiling in from of a pink heart, with two smaller hearts floating above it. There is a white volume icon in the upper right corner and white text below the icon. The image has a black background.]
Thank You
Apollo shut down on June 30th due to reddit making drastic and sudden increases to API pricing for developers.
It was an absolute honour to build Apollo for you all over the last 9 years, I loved every minute of it.
If you’d like to continue to support me, there’s some options below!
- Christian (u/iamthatis)
^I’m a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^
Ayy it’s good to see you guys over here o7
Hey, I would like to help with this, but I want to make sure I do it right and do not repeat any already existing transcripts. It gives me something productive to do on my phone that is hopefully better for my mental health and helps my fellow humans.
I usually scroll through the comments looking for the word “transcription”, and if I don’t see it, I go ahead. Should get easier for me once they implement search in comments on liftoff, which is hopefully soon. As for formats, you can find the formatting on the r/TranscribersOfReddit sub, and you can ask the discord if you have any questions. I’m on there too, and the mods may seem scary at first but trust me they’re really kind and just happy that you’re there trying to help. It’s volunteer work, after all.
The only big rule is if you aren’t doing it through ToR using the proper reddit queue (which is no longer active due to the bot shutting down from the API limits), then you need to change or remove the footer, and dont link to the ToR subreddit.
It’s an amazing community and honestly some of my recent transcriptions have been me trying to fight off my own depression by doing this. So you aren’t alone in those reasons, and it can be really nice to see just how much it helps people. Daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s super easy.
If you want to get started, but aren’t sure if you’re doing it right, feel free to ping me in a reply to your transcription on here and I can read it over and give you some pointers if needed. Best of luck!
Good human
Glad to know you guys are still around -
Glad to know we’re still remembered
I’ve never needed the transcription service myself but it always warmed my heart when you guys pop up in a comment sections
Glad to see this has come to Lemmy! Keep up the great work friend!
I hope the apollo developer makes an app for lemmy!
RIP Apollo and fuck you spez 🖕
Of all the things I was thinking for a potential final surprise, a memorial song was not one of them! RIP, Apollo.
Christian Selig’s YouTube channel has the video posted, and the description there says the vocalist is Zoe Wynns.
The amount of times I’ve opened the app due to muscle memory and seeing that screen…. Rip Apollo and fuck spez. I hope he steps on the pointiest of lego bricks.
That’s one of the main reasons I found an app for Lenny rather than using the web, I needed something to put in the hole Apollo left behind.
You can save a web page as an icon (In Safari: click the share icon -> select “Add to Homescreen”)
That’s fair, I’ve found Memmy to be a fantastic app for how early in development it is.
I feel like that’s the reason why I got wefwef.
Wefwef is not bad for a web app that you can add to your Home Screen. Mlem is basically inspired by Apollo, seems easy to use. It’s in TestFlight so you’ll have to download that and then grab the link to the beta.
There is another one called memmy, but I can’t find a working TestFlight link for that one as it requires a code to download.
I’ve noticed a lot of multiple posts with wefwef users. I’m using it too, and all the muscle memory from Apollo carries over nicely. It’s quite nice.
Yeah most everything I have used: wefwef, Mlem, web browser on my computer, lots of double posting.
Think it’s just growing pains from all of us coming from Reddit.
Now he can just come to Lemmy and create a very nice frontend to it.
wefwef is doing a pretty good job of filling that void at the moment
Yeah I’m liking it. Had Progressive Web Apps were so good in iOS already. Behaved like an actual app.
It’s been fun, Apollo will be missed. I hope Christian will have a go at a fediverse app in the future.
RIP Apollo. It was such a nice app
There is void left by Apollo - that I don’t think will be filled for a long time.
not that i’m disagreeing with you, but what made the app stand out compared to the others? i never used apollo and used other apps
On the surface Apollo just had a lot of small QOL stuff that I highly valued: multiple sub support at a time, excellent filter options, embedded link preview (saved me from getting RickRolled and allowed me to enjoy getting RickRolled even more), and many more.
Then there was all the small Easter egg stuff hidden in the app like tapping certain options multiple times to unlock secret icons for the app in the customization tab, or the link embed option showing websites of charities as default until you filled the text boxes.
Apollo looked very sleek, ran wonderfully, and cut out all the nonsense with Reddit. I used the official app once or twice a month for certain things and the experience was pretty miserable in my opinion and for what I value.
More than anything the dev; Christian, was just really active in the community, open with his development, and listened to the users. Was Apollo all roses and daises? Of course not, but I’m able to overlook things for how great an experience it gave me.
I used Apollo for about 3 years and I’ve stuck with it for iOS mostly for its clean UI design that mimics Apple’s design cues. It’s also pretty smooth to scroll through with the gestures making navigation easy. For reference, I’ve only tried Apollo on iOS and didn’t bother with the official app before.
😢
