Looks like theres a final surprise in the form of a song in Apollo now that it’s closed.
Can anyone identify the artist?
EDIT: someone managed to find it. From Christian’s YouTube page:
A fun parody of Sarah McLachlan’s I Will Remember You performed by the incredible Zoe Wynns
Crazy to see my lemmy account at <1m old when my Reddit one is 15yrs 11mo…kinda bummed I’m all but resigned to moving on just short of my sweet 16.
Hope to see these federated services take off!
RIP Apollo
No worries brosef. You’re early-adopting yet again. Give it time, and you’ll be one of the legacy guys once again.
- 10-year Reddit user
11 year old reddit account ❌ (deleted)
20 day old lemmy account ✅
This is the way.
I never thought about that… I’ll be proud to show off my account age in a few years
Yeah, 13 year veteran here. It’s actually kinda refreshing to have a fresh start. My dumbass high school self shared way too much on Reddit and picked obvious usernames. By the time I wised up I was in too deep. Doing things differently this time in a level playing field.
Alright people, we are looking for a avocado toast enjoyer from a place were lewd things need to be censored….
Image Transcription: Image with Text:
[The mascot icon for the app ‘Apollo for Reddit’, a small cartoon-style astronaut’s head, is shown smiling in from of a pink heart, with two smaller hearts floating above it. There is a white volume icon in the upper right corner and white text below the icon. The image has a black background.]
Thank You
Apollo shut down on June 30th due to reddit making drastic and sudden increases to API pricing for developers.
It was an absolute honour to build Apollo for you all over the last 9 years, I loved every minute of it.
If you’d like to continue to support me, there’s some options below!
- Christian (u/iamthatis)
^I’m a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^
Good human
Glad to know you guys are still around -
Glad to see this has come to Lemmy! Keep up the great work friend!
Release Apollo app for Lemmy 🤷♀️
I hope that Christian will make an app for Lemmy! I think he’ll take a break for a while to relax after dealing with reddit’s bullshit.
Wefwef app feels like I’m on Apollo. I love it
Decently surprised at how well it performs for a PWA.
I can’t find wefwef in the AppStore. Can you send the link?
nvm not a real app but a web app.
I recommend you to give it a try anyway. Once you install the icon on your desktop, it loads like a native app and works really smooth. I’m really loving it and helps a lot with the grief of losing Apollo.
It may be a web app, but when you add it to your home screen it looks and feels just like a native app.
Yeah agreed. The migration feature from Apollo to wefwef is great too!
I must be too late to export? I only see the thank you notice in Apollo.
If you shake your phone on the Thank You screen, an option will pop up allowing you to export. Not very straightforward or easily found, but it’s still possible!
Yeah I’m using it as I type this and it is incredibly similar, almost eerily. I’m kind of hoping the developer gives it it’s own unique character and soul in the future. Or since it’s open source (I’m pretty sure?) someone else can.
But with that being said I still strongly recommend so far
I kinda like the fact that it’s just Apollo. As a Reddit refugee it helps to have something familiar
The new update for Memmy is awesome. Can sort comments now. The app looks polished!
deleted by creator
This! Reuse as much as possible.
I’m sure Christian is taking some time off to lick his wounds and regroup, and I truly hope he’s able to move forward. If he makes a Lemmy app, I’ll definitely jump on it.
If you’re not already try wefwef. I keep forgetting it’s not actually Apollo I’m using.
Hoping for the day Christian makes Apollo for Lemmy; I’d gladly pay for it
Check out wefwef.app! It feels just like Apollo and I’m loving it.
its a little laggy but it works for me
The amount of times I’ve opened the app due to muscle memory and seeing that screen…. Rip Apollo and fuck spez. I hope he steps on the pointiest of lego bricks.
Wefwef is not bad for a web app that you can add to your Home Screen. Mlem is basically inspired by Apollo, seems easy to use. It’s in TestFlight so you’ll have to download that and then grab the link to the beta.
There is another one called memmy, but I can’t find a working TestFlight link for that one as it requires a code to download.
I’ve noticed a lot of multiple posts with wefwef users. I’m using it too, and all the muscle memory from Apollo carries over nicely. It’s quite nice.
That’s one of the main reasons I found an app for Lenny rather than using the web, I needed something to put in the hole Apollo left behind.
You can save a web page as an icon (In Safari: click the share icon -> select “Add to Homescreen”)
Now he can just come to Lemmy and create a very nice frontend to it.
wefwef is doing a pretty good job of filling that void at the moment
Yeah I’m liking it. Had Progressive Web Apps were so good in iOS already. Behaved like an actual app.
There is void left by Apollo - that I don’t think will be filled for a long time.
not that i’m disagreeing with you, but what made the app stand out compared to the others? i never used apollo and used other apps
On the surface Apollo just had a lot of small QOL stuff that I highly valued: multiple sub support at a time, excellent filter options, embedded link preview (saved me from getting RickRolled and allowed me to enjoy getting RickRolled even more), and many more.
Then there was all the small Easter egg stuff hidden in the app like tapping certain options multiple times to unlock secret icons for the app in the customization tab, or the link embed option showing websites of charities as default until you filled the text boxes.
Apollo looked very sleek, ran wonderfully, and cut out all the nonsense with Reddit. I used the official app once or twice a month for certain things and the experience was pretty miserable in my opinion and for what I value.
More than anything the dev; Christian, was just really active in the community, open with his development, and listened to the users. Was Apollo all roses and daises? Of course not, but I’m able to overlook things for how great an experience it gave me.
I used Apollo for about 3 years and I’ve stuck with it for iOS mostly for its clean UI design that mimics Apple’s design cues. It’s also pretty smooth to scroll through with the gestures making navigation easy. For reference, I’ve only tried Apollo on iOS and didn’t bother with the official app before.
🎶 I will remember you
You will remember me
Don’t let your loooooove pass me by 🎶
I’d love to see Apollo rise from the ashes but I get how Christian must be feeling about the whole thing right now. Still, its legacy will live on. Standards have been set and I’m sure a lot of devs have taken inspiration from that.
Honestly, he should make Apollo for Lemmy. Take all of that design work he’s already done and funnel it into a project that will literally never die.
I’m sad that Apollo is gone, but Memmy for Lemmy fills the hole left in my Home Screen just fine. The app has already progressed so far, it’s licensed under the GPL, and it has made my transition from Reddit to Lemmy flawless.
If you love Apollo, you might check out wefwef. It is incredible.
There was a song? Dang, I just opened it, said yep it’s blank and that’s fucked up. Then I sadly deleted it and opened up memmy.
You can listen to the song on his YouTube channel as well: https://youtu.be/KOFChFxsJ3I
Question. Who owns these lemmy sites? I understand it’s decentralized. Can someone breakdown exactly what that means? Who, if anyone, owns these sites/servers, how it all works?
Anyone can make their own server. Then those server talk to each other to share the posts, comments and votes. You are on lemm.ee, I’m on lemmy.one, different owner, slightly different rules, but we see the same stuff
RIP Apollo. You were good to me
How about instead of wasting time circle jerking in your 10 minutes of fame, you dedicate a few hours to add Lemmy/kbin/mastodon/whatever support to Apollo and actually support your users?
Although wefwef pretty much completely fills the gap left by Apollo, it still annoys me to see the way this guy is handling this situation. Not only is he doing jack shit to support his loyal longtime users, he went through the effort of updating the app to beg people not to refund the subscription.
/end rant
Glad this is downvoted. It takes way more than a couple of hours to completely change your apps backend to read from a completely different website’s API. And that’s not even thinking of how complicated dealing with the fediverse is, dealing with multiple domains and logging in through multiple fediverses.
The guy doesn’t owe you anything. Please be quiet.
I recommended his app to people, I paid for the subscription, I left a positive review on the appstore. I was a loyal user for a long time.
In the end, he tried (and fortunately failed) to sell Apollo to reddit, then just killed the app when that didn’t work. If he did care about users (aka the people that made him a lot of money), he could’ve sold the app to someone willing to continue it, or at least released it as open source.
It’s not the end of the world, and he didn’t eat a newborn baby or anything like that, but I don’t think people should be patting this guy on the back for the way he handled this. He just took the money and ran, abandoning his customers in the process. That’s not the type of business I want to support.
Reality check: vast majority of the people don’t give a shit what you or I do.
I am a day 1 user, bought lifetime pro within the month, and lifetime ultra on launch. I recommended the app to people. And guess what? No one gives a shit about me nor my recommendations. They’ve got their use out of the app; they’re happy that they’ve got a better Reddit experience while they were able to use the app; and now that the app is no more, they can be their own grown ass adults and decide what to do about the situation.
The app is down, due to no fault of the developer, and that’s that. And no, the developer didn’t take your money and ran with it. He’s offering refund for the unused subscription portion which yields a net deficit of estimated 250K USD that he will have to pay back to Apple after Apple Pay’s out people who doesn’t opt out. Given the situation, do you have 250K USD liquid cash to pay Apple on a 30 days notice, or would you rather ask nicely for some to choose to opt out of the refund? Because if you don’t, then maybe you shouldn’t be whining about your $13/yr subscription that you’re getting your prorated refund by choosing to not opt out.
The “bad guy” of the story is Reddit’s management. Not even so much for their goal of killing third party apps — their platform, their rules, that’s why we’re no longer on their platforms, and no longer playing by their rules — but rather their approach to the problem every step of the way. They could’ve announced a longer run way — “Starting 2024/01/01…” would’ve gave Christian (and other app devs) ample time to pivot and update their subscription model to make it work; limiting the maximum number of users (a-la Twitter in mid 2010s), however bad, would’ve still allowed the app to continue to exist. Demanding $20M/year on a 30 days notice, slander the devs, and actively suppress the entire moderation and user community? Bold move Reddit, let’s see how this will play out in a couple of months. Third party apps are likely but the first casualties of their decisions to implement this change.
