To answer some of these, Apollo was created well before the Reddit redesign, I started working on it back in 2014.
I'm not sure I 100% understand the criticism though. Inviting you to scroll through an app is a pretty normal thing, isn't it? What's the alternative?
I'm gathering you'd prefer more of a comments-focused experience rather than one focused around the posts themselves specifically? I've been on Reddit for over a decade, as far as I remember the posts have always been paramount and what attract people to the site, even though the discussions are great too. They're just a tap away. As you mentioned you can go into compact mode, then disable the thumbnails and you've basically got Hacker News, haha.
Your criticism seems like more of a comment on Reddit as a platform/community rather than a specific app (though I'm not sure what you mean by "old Reddit", Alien Blue?), but if I'm wrong about that I'm happy to hear any criticism.
FWIW, the comments are the main reason I go to any social media site (Reddit and HN included).
Have you been chipping away at this since 2014 or did something change in your motivation recently where you decided to complete it?
What would your reaction be to someone suggesting a rewrite in Electron so you could achieve crossplatform support?
These might seem like minor things, and they probably are for most people, but as an heavy iOS user I have a very good sense for how system components look and function, and it drives me up a wall when people reimplement them but break or fail to support some of their behaviors (specifically: if your custom component is supposed to look like a system control, it better act exactly like one!). As an iOS engineer I also know that these parts of UIKit are the somewhat problematic to deal with, but I appreciate apps that take the time to get it right and I would have hoped that an app that prides itself on looking at home on iOS would have put in the effort to care about this as I do. Hope this helps.
Electron wouldn't be a great idea since it doesn't work on iOS. React Native would be something to consider, but I've never been super impressed by any of the results (and it comes with a bunch of issues in and of itself, and to my knowledge isn't compatible with macOS like UIKit is now) so I'd change nothing in that regard.
Out of curiosity, when did you work at Apple? Your website says "built by a former Apple employee", but it seems you've been full-time on this app for most of your post-college years.
Great app though, I use it :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cfnfu8/my_names_chris...
If you considered this small addition that would be fantastic!
That said, I keep wondering when the iPad design mentioned what seems like ‘years’ ago is coming.
I keep hoping for something like Hack for HN that takes what’s currently a waste of screen width when using Apollo in landscape on iPad Pro (posts take 1/2 screen width, with 1/4 screen width margins on each side, putting the posts just out of reach of your thumbs when holding sides of ipad), and instead puts that list of posts on the left 1/4, and shows comments for a selected post on the right 3/4.
// Separately, for image post subreddits, like /r/EarthPorn/, really should have a mode to simply view photos scaled to full screen and swipe left/right to prior/next photo post, with a tap to see the post title and vote UI as an overlay, push up to go into photo + comments mode.
Holy shit, well, that is impressive!
For the record, I am not trying to hate or anything, scrolling through this thread I think there is some kind of cultural disconnect going on. I personally don't care for the infinite content scrolling of today's content aggregator, so I am sad this trend is reflected in more and more places.
I did a poor job of stating this as personal taste and not as assumed facts. Obviously, you (and a lot of others) use and always did use Reddit in a different way than me. There is of course nothing inherently wrong with serving these needs, especially when done in a much superior way like Apollo does.
If you read this reply, I would just like to urge you to keep the negative effects of excessive escapism, polarization, misinformation and group think in mind when designing features. Cheers!
Why does the comment and post body hide when you single tap? I am scrolling through a long post and my slow scroll registers as a tap. Now it’s hidden. Tap again and I lose my spot.
That said, you can turn it off for comments:
Settings > General > Tap to Collapse
That kind of delay encourages discussion and probably helps with the psychological negatives of infinite scroll
I also write longer comments when I’m using it.
The “skimability” of the posts you scroll through depend so much on what you subscribe to. I don’t have that issue due to what I read on there. I don’t think it’s Apollo’s place to make photo subs or askreddit harder to scan.
I'm guessing it's because I'm on an older iPhone 7, but Apollo's makes it very hard to write comments. In particular it loses my place when switching from Apollo, to another app to check something, then switching back. A message pops up about having saved the text, but frustratingly, it doesn't re-open the editor, so I have to go find the comment I was replying to and opening the compose reply there.
As to whether or not it's Apollo's "place" to make it easier/harder to scan, that makes no sense. Apollo's already an alternative UI, so it's already interjecting an opinion on the 'right' way to experience Reddit. That you might disagree with, eg making photo subs harder to scan, is a difference of opinion, but Apollo is already in that "place".
Tap on the top of a comment to collapse that comment and any below it, assuming you haven't turned off "tap to collapse" in settings > general > comments.
Set a gesture for one of the swipe directions to collapse the current thread (I believe this exists, by default, as right-short-swipe) in settings > gestures.
Apollo should be the official app.
Everything that has millions of random people joined to it has become a cesspool of lowest common denominator clickbait posts and photos.
https://www.reddit.com/r/swift/ https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/
By making the post body, and especially pictures, the first class citizen you incentivize all the wrong things:
* It is inviting to mindlessly scroll
* Attracting karma is paramount: The game is "upvote this in the 2 seconds I am spending scrolling past it or not"
* This in turn incentivizes shallow posts, strong, polarizing messages with no depth
At the same time, the mechanisms why I use(d) reddit over all the other escapism-in-a-bottle platforms are all discouraged:
* Reading comments, engaging in discussion. You don't even have to open the comment section anymore, so why would you? And if, you will only ever read one or two top comments, inviting the same lowest common denominator battle as with posts themselves.
* Building community, in-depth analysis, being exposed to alternating view points. Well, no place for that in the framework of rapid swiping and shouting in the void.
Good job on the Apollo team to at least include what they call "compact mode" (showcased about a second in the promo video), but the problem with these effects is that they are negatively affecting quality overall, whether or not you as a individual choose to sidestep them.
I hope a new community aggregator like the old reddit will arise soon...