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Yo! Apollo dev here, had lots of questions lately about Apollo and if it would return, so I wanted to answer some questions so y'all know 😊 (Spoiler: it's probably not what you want to hear)
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Hey all!

Over the last little bit with other apps offering subscription components, I both received a lot of messages asking about Apollo and saw a lot of questions in threads asking similar questions, so while I initially thought my reasons/perspectives were understood, I just wanted to make sure of that with this thread, and provide a place people could link to if someone was curious on my thoughts.

So, to get the obvious question out of the way: no, Apollo isn't coming back as a subscription offering. :(

If you're asking, "What, why? AppX did it!" I wanted to break down why this is the case for Apollo in a few points.

  • Firstly, through their actions, I think Reddit has made it clear they do not want developers on their platform, and rather than coming out and saying as much, they used rushed policy changes as a way to force them out. The questions I asked them showed they had done very little research into the decision (for instance, they didn't know the API was missing access to large parts of Reddit and had no idea if that could be improved). They instead rushed it out the door, ignoring requests for a more reasonable timeline, ultimately with the goal to shutter third-party apps, which they largely accomplished. Even if I had been able to make it work within the 30 days they gave me, they were unable to provide any guarantees/contract periods as to what the terms would be, (where, for instance the price and availability of the API would be locked in for a year) meaning that if an app started to do well again, they could simply increase prices on a whim. This whole process made it very clear to me that developers aren't something they value any longer on the platform, and a cultural sense of decency was lost somewhere along the way. With that in mind it would be incredibly hard to dedicate hundreds upon hundreds of hours to continue developing Apollo with such a fragile foundation beneath my feet.
  • Not being interested in developers is one thing, but the way they treated developers (not going to lie, myself especially), through deceit, disrespect, and shameful actions, really soured my passion toward the platform when the leadership acts like that. It's a lot like going into work everyday for a boss who hates you, it kinda stifles your creativity and motivation a bit, right? If Reddit was ever to come out and apologize, I think I'd consider bringing Apollo back, but I truly don't see that happening.
  • I have no issue paying a fee, but the pricing of the API is still something I take issue with. As I showed months ago, the price they're charging is far beyond what could be considered reasonable by their own revenue figures, and Apollo users used the app a lot on average, so as a result the monthly amount I'd have to charge would be higher than I'm comfortable charging. And even if I was able to theoretically set up a price point, paying for the inflated and antagonistic fee is not something I can morally get behind, it feels a lot like supporting their behavior and paying someone trying to shake people down.
  • Why not let users enter their own API key? Reddit said this was not allowed, unfortunately. If you've found ways to hack Apollo to support such a thing, that's fine by me, but developers aren't allowed to build in that functionality directly, and even if I were to go against them and do such a thing, it would only be a matter of time until they stopped it through one way or another.
  • Are you building an app for InsertRedditCompetitor? I am not.

I hope this doesn't come across as a salty ex rehashing the past haha, I legitimately just want to provide a hopefully concise explanation for folks as to where I'm coming from, and why, at this stage, Apollo is not coming back. I like to think communication with the community was always Apollo's strongest and most fundamental point, and I wouldn't want to lose that. I'm honestly over it and doing great (though it was pretty amusing last week when someone at the airport heard my name and came up to say sorry about how things went down. I hope your flight to Washington went well!)

A lot of people have asked how I'm doing in general, and I'm great thankfully (and I appreciate you caring)! I adored working on Apollo (and miss it immensely, I have to stop myself from writing down new ideas), but a forced change of pace is kinda fun in a lot of ways, you're forced into trying and exploring new things that you might not have otherwise. Don't get me wrong, early summer was probably the most stressful period of my life, but now I've settled into a point where I'm really enjoying things.

Professionally, I've been doing a lot of work on Pixel Pals (even went to NY for a really cool Apple Vision Pro lab since I have some fun ideas there), and Pixel Pals' monthly recurring revenue should eclipse Apollo's by the end of the year, so I'm thankfully in a good spot there and very thankful for the support. (Obligatory heads up to check it out if you haven't in a bit, it had a pretty serious iOS 17 update.) I have other things planned too of course, but Pixel Pals is a really fun app to work on.

If you are interested in some Apollo-related things, be it for nostalgic reasons or otherwise, Apollo merch has continued to do quite well, so I wanted to provide some more fun things that people were asking for, so over the next little bit I'll hopefully be announcing an Apollo plushie you can pick up, plus some cool desk pads/mats based on the goodbye wallpapers if that floats your boat :)

Lots of love,

- Christian

Comments
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what if i started selling nfts

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Yeah I just use old.reddit whenever I need to pop into a local subreddit. Their app is such a curious one, so many talented engineers work there, I've met a bunch of them, there's just a lack of vision somewhere higher up the chain

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think about it. bored apeollos

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Ok, will on Black Friday

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I don't use Reddit enough anymore to bother coding it lol

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I think you have more confidence in the ability for the average person to find a clean IPA compiled from source versus one that just claims to.

Regardless, open sourcing a project is something that once done you can never undo. I've open sourced an app in the past and it took no time at all for people to copy it and upload it to the App Store and it's just not a fun thing to deal with, so I'm really sorry and I do hear where you're coming from but it's not something I'm going to do

And even more regardless, I don't really have any interest in my software benefiting this platform anymore

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Pass, by the screenshots it looks like I've done plenty

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I don't really, I'll use old.reddit for times like this or I'm checking my local subreddits. Honestly I miss building for you folks more than I miss the app itself

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I don't think that was missing from the conversation as it's demonstrably not the case. Their API pricing was purely to be punitive toward developers.

From my original post:

As for the pricing, despite claims that it would be based in reality, it seems anything but. Less than 2 years ago they said they crossed $100M in quarterly revenue for the first time ever, if we assume despite the economic downturn that they've managed to do that every single quarter now, and for their best quarter, they've doubled it to $200M. Let's also be generous and go far, far above industry estimates and say they made another $50M in Reddit Premium subscriptions. That's $550M in revenue per year, let's say an even $600M. In 2019, they said they hit 430 million monthly active users, and to also be generous, let's say they haven't added a single active user since then (if we do revenue-per-user calculations, the more users, the less revenue each user would contribute). So at generous estimates of $600M and 430M monthly active users, that's $1.40 per user per year, or $0.12 monthly. These own numbers they've given are also seemingly inline with industry estimates as well.

Reddit makes about $0.12 per user monthly (from ads), having an API that would cost many dozens of times that is not making up for lost ad revenue, it's just punitive.

(And even if the price they announced was reasonable, giving 30 days before developers would start incurring fees is also nothing but punitive.)

Do you think you would build a client for the BlueSky protocol?

No sorry.

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Yeah, I think once they killed off the largest apps they were more willing to talk to the ones remaining. They stopped answering my emails when I asked for more time

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Apple said I can't discuss the final figures unfortunately

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Knock off

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Some people just like other people's work. I would support anything Ewan McGregor did

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Pixel Pals often did earn me more monthly than Apollo did in its prime (though I would say on average Apollo still did win out), but hopefully by the end of the year it'll eclipse Apollo Ultra's revenue (which was Apollo's largest revenue source)

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Haha no I'm not much of a drinker, never really developed the appetite for it outside of university :p

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I mostly use Mastodon with a touch of Twitter (regrettably), been meaning to get back into RSS though haha

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Yeah, I imagine the design work for that app must have been gruelling

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Thanks, I've been really happy with where Pixel Pals has gone :)

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I was told all I can say is: I attended a Vision Pro lab

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Please read the post

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I'd reach out to Imgur, I'm not sure off the top of my head

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I feel no bitterness, I just feel indifference for Reddit as a platform. Please read the post

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That's coming soon :)

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A great deal of it was me learning to program at scale so might not be the best resource to learn from depending on where you look :p

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I posted pictures on my Mastodon page a few months back!

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I'll keep adding more stuff, don't you worry :)

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You should be able to find pictures of the iPad app on my Mastodon page, I posted them a few months back

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That could be a fun thing to do as well hmm

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1 year ago