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Comment by philistine | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree that it's one point of view, but I hardly believe both examples do not have a simpler explanation: both companies no longer want APIs for third-party clients.

Elon wanted to turn it completely off and was probably convinced to ban the accounts of all the third-party clients and to try and harass the world's many weather services to pay 42,000$ a month.

Reddit has one credible third-party client: Apollo. He's always been fairly transparent about his money flow, so it's exceedingly easy for Reddit to price him out and put the fear of god into any developer interested in a Reddit client.

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> Reddit has one credible third-party client: Apollo.

Do you mean at least one? Because there are many "credible" ones, unless I misunderstand what you mean by credible.

Credible likely means “good and successful” in this context

By this definition, there's still multiple credible reddit clients - relay, baconreader, rif.

Boost also.

I'm surprised how infrequently I see Relay mentioned considering how slick it is

Redreader is good. I have no idea how successful it is.

> Reddit has one credible third-party client: Apollo

Tell me you only use iOS without telling me you only use iOS...

> Reddit has one credible third-party client: Apollo.

Ooof. I mean, if you're only an iOS user, maybe?

And there's even Narwhal on iOS that's totally viable and fine. That's insane hyperbole.

I stopped using narwhal because it doesn't have good "drafts" support. At the time, I was writing a lot of thoughtful, heavily revised comments and posts.

On iOS Apollo and Narwhal were both good options last I tried them. Android has a lot more going on. All of Infinity, Joey, Sync (my choice), RiF, Boost and Now are pretty solid. Pretty reductive indeed to say Apollo is the only serious contenter...

Here's the difference. Apollo has arguably more user value than Reddit itself. I wish Apollo worked as a client for HN, for example. It could easily be plugged into any similar platform and still be one of the best mobile apps ever built.

The others are just a-dime-a-dozen Reddit clients.

Speak for yourself. I would pay for RiF to add HN support, while I couldn't care less about other clients, including Apollo.

RiF is probably the only reason I used Reddit for as long as I did. Excellent interface, really solid client. I even paid the premium just to show my appreciation.

My hatred for Reddit the platform only grew as time passed, to a point where I mostly dropped the site from my browsing habits a couple of years ago. I hope the recent changes bring an end to Reddit, the world will be better without it.

But my hatred for Reddit does not extend to RiF, much to the opposite. I hope whatever Reddit replacement spawns in the future has a RiF for it.

Understandable, given you’re probably on Android.

I took another look at RIF just in case my memory of it was out of date and the difference in quality between it and Apollo is massive. I’m doubling down on my original comment: Apollo is a truly special app and RIF (and likely others) are very generic clients.

I am an Android user so I don't know Apollo but I too am a huge RIF fan -- it's the only way I consume Reddit. I also agree with GP statement, I wish I could use the RIF app as a HN reader.

What makes Apollo a "truly special app?" in your opinion?

The TL;DR is that it's so good, it increased my time on Reddit by 10x or more versus using the website. I had to delete it because it was such a joy to use, it's all I wanted to spend my free time on.

More specifically, just a few things: 1) lovely UI design with proper adherence to iOS human interface guidelines, 2) useful customization, 3) flawless performance throughout, 4) gesture support which translates into being able to sift through a lot of content and conversations, 5) complex native (performant!) in-app support for many media types hosted on all types of 3rd party sites, 6) and just all around thoughtful and thorough support for the entire Reddit platform and its features.

All of this executed extremely well by just one person. Frankly, an inspiration and should be championed here.

Not to dunk on Apollo since it is excellent on iOS, but Boost on Android has all those things. It also has a tablet UI, moderator support, and a "gallery" masonry view that is a joy to use. Last I checked, Apollo has neither an iPad UI nor a masonry post view.

(I have also deleted Boost many times to control my usage.)

AFAIK, Apollo also has extensive moderator support (I'm not a mod so I can't speak to it but fairly confident it exists) but yeah, no iPad support which really sucks.

I took a look at Boost and it's really nice! Looks extremely similar to Apollo to the point that I think they may have just duplicated the Apollo app on Android and this is not a bad thing at all. I was considering doing the same for HN.

I've used Apollo when I was on iOS. It's indeed great.

But holy hell, you must have spent exactly 0 time with Android clients, or just don't enjoy Android apps in general, cause I'd easily put Sync and Boost on equal footing as Apollo. Infinity is extremely solid as well.

Yeah, this is the equivalent of a freelancer quoting an absurd price for a job they don’t want.

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