Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Just wanted to say that I went ahead and bought the wallpapers due to Christian handling this, in my honest opinion, responsibly and maturely. The dev has been nothing but transparent about the whole development process of Apollo, and even with dealing with Reddit's BS he still just states the facts, no whining no pity party. That's so rare these days. I wish things could have turned out different but anyways I greatly admire his handling of the situation.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dsusanj
If by wealthy, you mean that Christian Selig makes more than I do as a teacher, then yeah, good for him. I don’t view it as false pretences though, in that he has made it pretty clear what I am getting myself into. It’s not that dissimilar from the Tweetbot incident and I am glad other developers are able to learn something from it on how to deal with the fallout when your app has to shutter.

Now to think if there is any other way I can ensure my comments get deleted permanently from Reddit and stay deleted.



Why does he need to have “earned it”? You are right in that nobody owes him a living, but you can’t seem to accept that it’s also up to the individual to decide whether they want to just let him keep the remainder of the unused subscription or not.
Shreddit will delete all of your comments and then your account. It does use the API to perform its magic, so you’ll need to run it before July 1.
 
LOL.

First: they have to run the API whether 3rd party apps use it or not, it’s how Reddit works.

Second: the cost to run an API is nowhere near what you think it is. Source: I work for a major IT company and am a developer involved in our API.

Third: Plenty of other companies charge for public APIs at nowhere near the rate Reddit is charging.

Fourth: The CEO has admitted this isn’t about covering costs but about blocking 3rd party apps. They were just to chicken **** to say so upfront and only admitted it when no one bought their smoke screen.

You need to have API, but you are never forced to expose this API.

Developer speaking for ops guys about the cost of infra? Nice one.

Reddit is greedy but also this is a business that wants to monetize its product? Nothing new. Of course, the purpose to have the high price for API access is to get rid of 3rd party apps or force them to have high subs to be not competitive to the official, free app + Reddit Premium. Twitter did the same :).
 
  • Like
Reactions: pdoherty
Of the million reasons to delete your reddit account, this is just a small one. Why are people so upset?
 
May I ask why you don’t simply relaunch with an asking price that matches the new API cost? Surely many avid users will come back. Even if it shrinks, you have a built-in, loyal customer base.

That's the part I didn't get as well. Could have at least given it a whirl at making that business model work, but went straight to the shut down. There's an obvious loyal user base there that would be willing to pay. What that number is I don't know, but it's seemingly worth finding out rather than just mothballing the app (unless of course he was looking to move onto something else anyway and this is just the convenient reason for doing so).
 
I still don’t get why there can’t be a compromise and Reddit just require a user to subscribe to premium in order to use 3rd party apps. Part of the issue is Reddit isn’t monetizing those users with advertising revenue, that would address that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pdoherty
When Apple see's a product/business that can enhance/improve their own products, they buy that product/business
CodeWarrior says “hello.”

Apple even warned its users to STOP using CodeWarrior and THEY WOULD BE VERY SORRY IF THEY CONTINUED USING CODEWARRIOR. Apple fundamentally broke CW with an OS release (10.5 maybe? Can’t remember the OS now) and CW folded almost instantly.

ApplicationEnhancer also says hello. Same story. APE folded with MacOS 10.7, almost instantly.

In both cases, and others, Apple simply said “no,” and the company instantly folded.

So, no, Apple isn’t as great and wonderful of a company as you’d think. You can disagree with this all you want but you can’t change history without time travel and you just can’t do that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Will Tisdale 🎗
Can you blame Reddit for saying "yah umm.... you are profiting off our intellectual property, so um like we are stopping that". ? It is entirely legitimate stance & frankly every rationale person in this room would have done the same.

I am genuinely mad this developer "thinks" he deserves some form of charity, which he is going to stuff into his fat pockets. Sounds like he has made a lot of money over the years.

Wait... so an independent developer who added value to Reddit is greedy and should take some financial hit, otherwise it's "charity", but Reddit, the massive corporation that derives its entire value off user-submitted content, is a-okay?

As demonstrated by people talking about this, Reddit is fundamentally making using their site worse for a small segment of their users. It's not even a case of sherlocking a good idea; if Reddit had actually wanted to make more money and keep users happy they could have bought Apollo. But they'd rather lock down their API and make everyone's situations worse, from moderators to people with disabilities. They are in no way a poor defenseless company.

Some people need to really consider how much boot they're licking for giant corporations who squeezed this guy solely because they aren't making *enough* money (hint: there's no such thing as making enough money.) Corporations can be right or wrong, but they're never your friend and defending them is a suboptimal use of your time.

I still don’t get why there can’t be a compromise and Reddit just require a user to subscribe to premium in order to use 3rd party apps. Part of the issue is Reddit isn’t monetizing those users with advertising revenue, that would address that.

That would require foresight and valuing long-term revenue. Neither Twitter or Reddit have considered that, because they're run by idiots.
 
Hilarious that he had enough time to update his app to allow you to not receive a refund, but an update to a new price was just out of the question.

Good lord.
 
  • Disagree
  • Like
Reactions: Z-4195 and 123
If I understand it, he sold for a $5 one time fee, unlimited access to his app. So he just assumed reddit api would be free for ever and that those paying only $5 wouldn’t cost him anything?

He could raise the price for the people paying monthly to easily cover their costs. But up to 50k lifetime power users would not generate him more money to cover new costs they incur.

He’s shutting down because he made a bad business decision. One that depends on free access to someone else’s service.
 
Yikes take. This guy made one of the best apps ever. Better than whole companies can put out. Does anyone owe this dev anything? Absolutely not. But I also have pity for a guys main source of revenue shutting down seemingly overnight.

And that's why you don't start a business that's entirely dependent on another business.

It doesn't matter if his app was great, the point is, he charged people ahead of time for access to his app and when reddit made changes, he was forced to return money to people. He never had a plan for this. The dude has literally made millions with Apollo. The guy you were responding to is right.
 
It's mostly about standards. Apollo uses the standard iOS elements and sticks to the iOS design guidelines, and as such it gets a ton of platform features for free that Apple have worked hard to provide - like being usable by disabled users who need screen readers and voice-over etc.

The official reddit app looks fine, but because it's using completely non-standard elements it throws all iOS's hard-won accessibility features under the bus and tells blind users to uh, go away?

The reddit app looks like reddit, while Apollo looks like an iOS app.

It's mostly a personal preference thing, but a lot of people like it when the app speaks the "design language" of the platform rather than pushing their own custom look.
Well, any blind user here so peeved? This sort of anger and disdain shouldn’t just be about form, or is it? The Reddit app functions as it should regardless of form, as do many many critical and useful apps on the Apple platform which don’t follow the iOS form. I see no one fighting this.
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: 123
Very unfortunate timing and development for anyone who purchased Ultra Lifetime in early April.

$45/$60 for 3 months of Lifetime is a raw deal.
 
Just FYI: if Apollo's bill is high, look at the bill Reddit is putting up to run the API.

Sorry, but Apollo gets no sympathy from me. And before you even ask, I am an iOS developer and I understand the risks in implementing ANY API.
Clearly an iOS developer without morals.

I’m one too and even I’m not so ignorant I can’t see Reddit is still in the wrong here.
 
Last edited:
which he's been profiting off of the hard work Reddit put in without paying a dime to Reddit.

perhaps there should be a button instead of cancelling a refund, it should be donated to reddit.
This is a lie holy moly. How are people this misinformed ? Apps don’t make themselves.

Apollo still took A LOT of work to make, arguably more than the official Reddit app did considering how lacklustre it is.
 
Last edited:
So, Reddit created a website for people to engage in discussions about various topics. They also provided an API that others can use to access their website. And when people go to their website to have their discussions, and when others use the APIs provided by Reddit, they are "leaching"[sic] the company? By doing exactly what the company wanted them to do?

The API is not intended for stuff like Apollo.

And yes, Apollo was leeching, making money of an other company while Reddit has to pay for all the server costs of 900.000 users everyday of which Reddit receives no dime, only a huge bill that Reddit has to pay for Apollo.

And it is no surprise that this same Apollo wants it’s users to pay his bills for a refund.
 
The API is not intended for stuff like Apollo.

And yes, Apollo was leeching, making money from an other company while Reddit has to pay for all the server costs of 900.000 users everyday of which Reddit receives no dime.
And Reddit makes money by leeching content from content creators without paying them a dime.

What's your point?
 
  • Like
Reactions: StudioMacs
Decline the refund since it will be paid out of pocket...get out of here with that trash! As if they didn't make enough money off this to begin with. People are so pathetic these days. Today we see go fund me pages for everything. You know what the go fund me of the 80's and 90's was...it was getting a job or a side hustle if you already had a job. I'm all for sticking it to the man when the man deserves it, but this is outrageous.
 
And Reddit makes money by leeching content from content creators without paying them a dime.

What's your point?

Reddit makes money from advertisement, not the content creators. And Reddit doesn’t get advertisement income from Apollo.
 
  • Like
Reactions: anoobis
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.