Popular Reddit App Apollo Shutting Down After Today, Pixel Pals Migration Feature Added

[xpxp2002]

There's a difference between cynically trashing a person's reputation or career over a single misguided comment and a coordinated choice by consumers to stop consuming a service over predatory practices.

Reddit exists inside a free market economy. Viable competition is welcome.

The irony is that the concept of "cancel culture" was started and perpetuated by the same group of people who've complained for years that if somebody isn't happy with a person/company's behaviors that one should "vote with your wallet."

People are effectively voting with their wallets by taking their time and browsing elsewhere, depriving Reddit of that ad revenue. And now the same people who basically said "if you're not happy, take your business elsewhere" are now crying "cancel culture." Go figure.

 

[coolfactor]

I briefly installed Pixel Pals to show support, but removed it after my phone complained of overheating. Probably just a coincidence, but it was the only new things I had installed in months, and the only time I'd seen that warning.

 

[hehexd1234]

Acting like "revolutionaries" out here is funny to me, Tweetbot suffered the same fate and didn't make a fuss about it.

 

[sw1tcher]

If I remember correctly, the app could have continued if Reddit wouldn't change the price within a month notice.
Like if they had a few months or half a year to transition from $1/month to $10/month to include the API cost.

But with such a short notice, it is only possible to pull the plug.

That wasn't my understanding of things based on what Christian posted. He didn't want to charge $5 or $10 per month because he didn't think anyone would pay that much so he didn't even try to see what would happen.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw

Why can't you just charge $5 a month or something?

This is a really easy one: Reddit's prices are too high to permit this.

It may not surprise you to know, but users who are willing to pay for a service typically use it more. Apollo's existing subscription users use on average 473 requests per day. This is more than an average free user (240) because, unsurprisingly, they use the app more. Under Reddit's API pricing, those users would cost $3.52 monthly. You take out Apple's cut of the $5, and some fees of my own to keep Apollo running, and you're literally losing money every month.

And that's your average user, a large subset of those, around 20%, use between 1,000 and 2,000 requests per day, which would cost $7.50 and $15.00 per month each in fees alone, which I have a hard time believing anyone is going to want to pay.

 

[Brad7]

For the amount of traffic and data devs and users brought Reddit all these years, they should be paying us! 😤

I already deleted my account, screw ‘em.

It’s true what people had been saying, the only way forward is a decentralized internet. One that is not beholden to any masters. We would each host a small part of it and wouldn’t have to part with our data or our money. One day we will have this people’s internet.

 

[AppleWatchGuy]

Yes, there is a difference. One is a PR stunt and another is cancel culture.

I don’t have sympathies for either side. One individual played the victim card while cashing in on an opportunity, irrespective of the figure, and the other just being a greedy corporation.

its just too much exploitation going on

reddit says it best

 

[sw1tcher]

It’s true what people had been saying, the only way forward is a decentralized internet. One that is not beholden to any masters. We would each host a small part of it and wouldn’t have to part with our data or our money.

If no one will have to part with their money, then how do expenses (servers, electricity, etc) get paid, through Ads?

 

[jlc1978]

And if Reddit doesn't burn all bridges, Mr. Selig could of course restart Apollo in a few months with new pricing to include the API cost.

That's my thought as well. He clearly had a popular app with a large user base; and felt he couldn't afford to pay what his monthly costs would be to access Reddit. I have no idea how the negotiations went, but it seems to me a reasonable compromise could have been reached; one that benefits both sides. Hard to say what the actual sticking points were.

From where I sit, it seems Reddit thought that charging for API access was a way to juice revenue, I could see some consultant running numbers and saying "that one app alone will add 4 mill $/month in revenue" and based on the API calls you're looking at XXX Million $ per year added revenue with virtually no associated costs.

Of course, if those numbers don't pan out, the consultant will just point out their job was to run revenue numbers, not analyze potential developer reactions; and of course send Reddit a bill and a proposal for XX more $ to analyze what happened.

 

[Dbsr87]

Good. Apollo should stop freeloading off of Reddit's work.

And for those wanting to donate to Christian, just know he's using tear emojis in his tweets while laughing at the numbers of digits in his bank account.

He was willing to work with them and pay a fair price however Reddit had no intention in doing that because they don’t want Apollo to exist. They are killing it by setting an absurd price for API use.

Not sure how you can take Reddit’s side here.

 

[Brad7]

If no one will have to part with their money, then how do expenses (servers, electricity, etc) get paid, through Ads?

No ads. By the time this software is ready, everyone’s local compute would be enough. Some people would even have excess compute to donate to those that don’t have much around the world.

And electricity costs are shrinking the more we move to renewables.

Even today, compute and costs are almost there. Maybe storage has a bit more to go before the whole internet is Peer-to-Peer (instead of being centralized/cloud-based).

 

[FlavorfulTreat]

Good. Apollo should stop freeloading off of Reddit's work.

And for those wanting to donate to Christian, just know he's using tear emojis in his tweets while laughing at the numbers of digits in his bank account.

These are exactly the kinds of posts and replies to expect in dead 3rd party Reddit app world.

So - get ready for the entirety of Reddit to be another Musk like adventure.

 

[GizmoDVD]

These are exactly the kinds of posts and replies to expect in dead 3rd party Reddit app world.

So - get ready for the entirety of Reddit to be another Musk like adventure.

Yes, all the quality posters are Apollo users

 

[Kar98]

because rampart apollo fanboism is happening and it's really disgusting how much grifting is happening

Rampart? Like, big ole castle fortifications?

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

I never spent a cent on Apollo and used it for years and years. Thanks to the developer for letting me use all his hard work for free.

Also top tip: these threads are a great way to find users/trolls to add to your ignore list that will make MacRumors a much more pleasant place.

Not to diminish his merit, but he made a hell lot of money (millions) , with a decent amount of work , and a few hundreds bucks for imgur hosting etc

So even if YOU were using it for free, it certainly wasn't from pure kindness lol

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

As a platform, Reddit is completely dependent on its users. As soon as they leave, that's the end of it.

As is so often the case, it's the most avid users who make the biggest impact. Many moderators will belong to that group, as well as the people who use third party apps. You may not immediately see the consequences of their departure, but over time the quality and quantity of contributions will decrease, making it less compelling for remaining users to visit the website.

A social media platform declaring war on its own users, what a great idea...

Mods showed they care too much about their "empowering" position . Even those who were extremely mad at reddit, like Aaron, r/apple mod ,who got angry , calling SPEZ out when he threatened them to remove , making tons of Twitter posts ....promptly came back with the tail between his legs , soon as he felt threatened for his head mod power to be taken from.him

 

[Thunderstrike76]

Goodbye Reddit. Apollo will be dearly missed. 🤖 ☹️

You were great and made a big difference in this world. Bigger and better things are ahead! Thank you! 🥺

Can you show proof you deleted Reddit?

 

[Shamgar]

As a daily user of Apollo, I thought I'd try the reddit app as a replacement. It's a vastly inferior interface and makes trying to use my curated feed a pain. Not something I will do for fun. It is a shame that reddit had to attack their third-party apps so maliciously in this fiasco. There could have been a healthy balance where reasonable fees were charged, reddit got high activity and active income from power users, power users got an actually useful interface, and everybody won. In the end, I'll probably be better off slashing my reddit usage by 99% anyways, so maybe I should just be grateful for less social media in my life.

 

[stiligFox]

What’s sad to me is - I’d never known or tried Apollo until this whole thing started - I’ve always used the official Reddit app. I tried it for the first time this week, and HOLY MOLY it’s so much better, faster, cleaner! It makes the official app look like garbage.

I’m sad, I wished I’d been using it all these years. Spez sucks. All the third party devs wanted was a REASONABLE API rate, not the ungodly amount Reddit is asking.

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

Can you show proof you deleted Reddit?

Deja vu

 

[jlc1978]

Not to diminish his merit, but he made a hell lot of money (millions) , with a decent amount of work , and a few hundreds bucks for imgur hosting etc

So even if YOU were using it for free, it certainly wasn't from pure kindness lol

No one is claiming he did it out of the goodness of his heart; rather Reddit's pricing would be unsustainable.

He has what, a free, $5 onetime Pro and 13$/year Ultra subscription. He estimates, based on usage, it'd cost 1.7 million dollars per month. I've seen estimates of 1.5-2 million Apollo users per month. At that level, he'd need every user to sign up for the Ultra tier just to break even; and including the Pro lifetime license holders.

Depending of the distribution of users, he no doubt could make a decent living from his app; though I suspect the curve is heavily skewed towards free users with $5 next and the trailing end the Ultra user base, so it's not as big as some may think.

He also said he estimates Reddit makes 12 cents/user/month from ads, but would generate $2.50 from API fees.

If his estimates are correct, what seems to be the most likely probable cause is Reddit wants to kill 3rd party apps to capture more ad revenue; since it's fees are unlikely to be affordable to any app developer with a decent user base. If Reddit leadership really believe they'll get the API revenue and increased their revenue by some 20x or so I'd question their logic.

 

[tripsync]

These are exactly the kinds of posts and replies to expect in dead 3rd party Reddit app world.

So - get ready for the entirety of Reddit to be another Musk like adventure.

You mean like how nearly every major ev auto manufacturer is now adopting Musk's NACS charging because it makes a ton of sense?
Or like how Twitter isn't dead yet but instead is very much alive?

 

[tripsync]

He was willing to work with them and pay a fair price however Reddit had no intention in doing that because they don’t want Apollo to exist. They are killing it by setting an absurd price for API use.

Not sure how you can take Reddit’s side here.

Actually Reddit has every intention of working with Apollo. Unfortunately Christian has no experience in AI field and he didn't include the premium of what major AI startups are willing to pay for API access into the "fair price" calculation.

Maybe factor that in and you can see Reddit's side instead of blindingly listening to what you want to hear?

 

[palmujukka]

RIP Apollo. Good luck for Christian for whatever he decides to do in the future!

 

[eatrains]

Actually Reddit has every intention of working with Apollo. Unfortunately Christian has no experience in AI field and he didn't include the premium of what major AI startups are willing to pay for API access into the "fair price" calculation.

Maybe factor that in and you can see Reddit's side instead of blindingly listening to what you want to hear?

You should factor in the difference between AI data ingestion and a viewer app.

 

[tripsync]

As a platform, Reddit is completely dependent on its users. As soon as they leave, that's the end of it.

And? Tell me something I don't know.

As is so often the case, it's the most avid users who make the biggest impact. Many moderators will belong to that group, as well as the people who use third party apps. You may not immediately see the consequences of their departure, but over time the quality and quantity of contributions will decrease, making it less compelling for remaining users to visit the website.

A social media platform declaring war on its own users, what a great idea...

Well no. Plenty of subreddits I belong to are run by abusive moderators who don't even follow their own rules. This has been going on for several years, yet I still use reddit daily.

It's not the lack of quality moderators that will kill Reddit. Moderators would have to actively do things to destroy reddit (such as setting the sub to NSFW which prevents ads from appearing). That I can see that happening.