If the number of people using it so tiny then why is such a big problem for Reddit? It's not like calling an API is more cost than using the website itself. Huffman says only 3% of users use 3rd party apps. If that's the case, then why bother with all this crap? For some slice of 3%?

If it’s such a tiny number of people, why is spez so desperate to shut it down?

The question to ask is "why are mods taking down the whole site for a tiny app"

almost every company does not allow direct competitors in their platform. I m not even sure about the apps they are "cooperating" with. Down the road, one of them may end up reselling reddit content and come into conflict again.

The fact that reddit made poor decisions in the past should not stop them from making the right decisions now. Unfortunately though they still dont seem to have a good plan

This isn’t just about Apollo, it’s about the API changes in general and how those affect all third party apps as well as the extensive tools that mods have had to build and use to make up for Reddit’s poor tooling.