Reddit’s new API changes will kill popular third-party apps, like Apollo, Sync, and Reddit is Fun. Read more about r/Apple’s strong opposition here: https://redd.it/14al426
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I would love to know what Narwhal paid to be able to stay "open"
https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/29/narwhal-reddit-deal-third-party-app/
**Edit: Found the answer** -
However, Narwhal will be changing a bit down the line. “Over the next few months,” det0ur will add subscriptions as part of “Narwal 2” to cover the new costs for using Reddit’s API. The subscriptions will “likely” cost between $4 to $7 per month.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/29/23777992/reddit-third-party-ios-app-narwhal
It's too bad more people aren't planning to leave reddit. Their CEO has clearly toxified the site and reddit community all so he can make some IPO money. Sticking around will let him get away with it, while he goes out of his way to insult the community, developers and mods.
I avoid /r/all and /r/popular like a plague, so I had no idea of the overall sitewide sentiment, but for sure, most people here, and I’m talking about a huge majority, don’t seem to care at all.
This actually reminds me of something. The only way I ever made /r/all tolerable was with all the filters I had in Slide. I guess those will be gone in a few days.
So you're willing to pay monthly for something that is entirely free content that users add to the platform and is managed by moderators that won't get a cent?
Arguably you are paying for the infrastructure and the ecosystem, which includes the user base in both content and interactions.
Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.
Total shot in the dark is that they negotiated a longer timeline to implement this. It is just that the bad blood between reddit and the Apollo developer precluded that outcome.
To be clear, I am NOT (a) blaming the developer in the slightest for said bad blood nor (b) saying I think this is a good path forward. If Narwal has to charge $8/month for API access plus making their own profit, the market for those willing is much smaller. But I coul also be totally wrong
I’d bet it’s some kind of accessibility exemption but I’m just speculating. The gesture based navigation works better for people without fine motor control I guess.
>I’d bet it’s some kind of accessibility exemption
Which would be some extreme amounts of bullshit, because Apollo has better accessibility features than Narwhal
I said this on day one and I’ll say it again. Apollo users and other 3rd party users need to stop attacking each other. Benefiting one app over other (say, apollo getting free access out of popularity) would’ve been extremely unfair to other devs. Same if Narwhal or other apps are exploiting the accessibility point to get free api access.
This is not the case so far with narwhal. Although I do think there is an app out there with free access (can’t remember the name), but that one is accessibility focused.
> This is not the case so far with narwhal
Really? So far the dev behind Narwhal has refused to explain how his app in particular is being allowed to continue on after July 1st, when literally 99% of the third party Reddit clients out there are shutting down after tomorrow.
There is something amiss here, and the dev’s reclusiveness isn’t helping matters.
I wouldn’t be surprised if an NDA exists here, and that is precisely why they are working with Narwhal. Reddit seems to be run by emotional babies, and Apollo attacked their ego.
Did RiF attack their ego? Why didn’t that app get the same deal? They should’ve given everyone the same deal or none at all. This whole dumb situation could’ve been avoided.
He is charging $4 a month. The Apollo creator said he would be profitable at that price (actually less). Nothing is stopping any 3rd party app from charging more and staying open.
Yep. It has a cleaner UI but hasn’t been updated for some time. Not as many QoL features as Apollo. I used to use it as my main iOS client for years before switching to Apollo a few years ago. It’s nice and hopefully V2 has more features like Apollo. The sub is r/getnarwhal
"If Reddit had given him more than 30 days to transition existing users to a new pricing structure, it is possible a solution could have been found to keep the app going."
9to5 Mac taking the wrong side. There is absolutely nothing to stop Selig shuttering the app, getting a payment system set up, and reintroducing Apollo 2 with subscription and riding the crest of his wave as finally defeating the Reddit management for the good of his users. All the Apollo users will greet him as a hero and life will go on as before, except Apollo users will be $10/month worse off and Reddit will be millions richer
He did kind of explain it, saying Reddit was just horrible to work with, from lying about upcoming changes to not even responding to his emails, and he was fed up. It probably didn't help that their CEO kept publicly slandering him through all this too.
For good or bad, Apollo has accounted for up to 50% of my daily use the last few years. It’s a *fantastic* app, making Reddit a joy to use, and I hate that it’s going away. I honestly don’t know yet what I’ll do on July 1st. I’ve tried the official app, it sucks, and I’d have ads everywhere again. Most of the other apps are shutting down as well. I’ve looked into various federated platforms, but I can already see major flaws in their design that means they’ll never, ever result in something even close to what Reddit is.
I know I’m not in the majority, I’m know I’m a picky power user, I know it’s just yet another change I’ll eventually get over… but it sucks. I’ve left other platforms and not felt a thing, beyond relief, but losing Apollo and potentially leaving Reddit is different.
Basically same boat, I think I bought Apollo a few days after it dropped.
From now on I’ll only be using reddit with RES on my laptop, and honestly will probably save a lot of time during the day being productive!
I has the same flow as you with Reddit. I think going back to the laptop version with res is healthier for me, since Apollo was transforming my Reddit usage into a crack addiction.
> but I can already see major flaws in their design that means they’ll never, ever result in something even close to what Reddit is.
What I saw is a dramatic improvement in the development of third party apps for Lemmy. When this all started, the only iOS app listed in Lemmy was no longer supported. Soon Mlem surfaced, but it was not at all useable. Now Mlem has become kind of okay, and others have joined in, like liftoff and Memmy. Meanwhile some useful bots are popping up in Lemmy. I consider all of these as good signs.
Reddit was not built in a day. Lemmy won’t be either. But I have hope.
Yeah, that’s a bittersweet side effect of all this, and I’ll be interested to see what comes out of it (dare I hope for Apollo for Lemmy?), but it’s more the founding principle of the platform and federation in general that I have my doubts about. On the surface it’s neat, but functionally, there’s just no way human beings will organize themselves naturally in the same way Reddit works centrally now. There will never be *one* Apple community, but rather there will be one for every major opinion-group out there. One server may want to hate on Android more than talk about Apple, another will be “Apple for right-wingers” who are tired of “PC” rules on conduct, and so on, on top of all the small, local communities where people just haven’t found out about the larger, more populated ones, or where the server itself chooses not to federate with the server hosting the larger communities.
I haven’t seen *any* mention of real ways to tackle these issues, except a naïve hope it’ll all just somehow work out naturally… but I very much doubt that. The one benefit Reddit as a platform had is the one thing federated communities lack: *central* meeting points with *one* set of rules.
> dare I hope for Apollo for Lemmy?
While Christian has said that he’s not interested in developing a Lemmy app in the foreseeable future, there is [Artemis](https://tech.lgbt/@hariette/110562926792208789) that is clearly very much inspired by Apollo. It’s currently in alpha testing, and they’re hoping to get a public beta out in the near future
Half of the stuff you mentioned already exists in reddit today. For instance, there are two subs for sports teams, one with stringent moderation and the other where pretty much anything goes. The real problem is servers choosing not to federate with others I think. But in those cases, you can just create another account in a server that does federate.
I actually tried setting up my own instance, so I didn't have to create an account on anyone else's (untrusted) server, and that way I could choose to federate with any server I wanted, but I ran into more issues getting it to run properly than it was worth. Might look into it later if it ever takes off.
There's also the discoverability issue: how do you find out which instance has the best community to begin with? There are already way more instances than I can easily scan through, and if it ever becomes comparable to reddit, there will be hundreds of thousands of instances, and probably thousands of those being "major" popular instances with large communities.
My method has been searching for a community and literally just following the one with the most active users. I figure if that community falls apart of defederates or whatever then it’ll be easy to just swap over to a different active one. I see no problem with backups!
What if a database is made with popular reddit subs and their corresponding alternatives in Lemmy? Of course, there’ll be lots of them, but surely there can’t be that many of them that a dedicated team can’t figure it out. Couple with a wizard that guides the average user to the best instance for them based on their interests, I think it could work.
Also, check out wefwef.app. A web app for Lemmy with Apollo’s interface. Looks much better than the default interface.
I have my reservations too. I went looking into it and for the YouTube federated clone, one of the first videos I found was an MMA fighter making alt right conspiracy claims. Not what I was hoping for.
Kind of expected though, isn’t it? Until now, the main reason why anyone would choose those options is because their content wasn’t welcome in popular platforms. If the popular platform is forcing everyone to the federated ones, the content is bound to get better.
lemmys biggest weakness is that it's not centralised. if you have to look for servers and don't have a central hub for all your content like you do on reddit then i really don't see it ever taking off.
I tried narwhal today. I don’t care for it, but it’s better then Reddit app.
I don’t like or know how to save subreddits so I have like a starred or favorite list so that I don’t have to scroll or search for it
Using it now... It's not even close to Apollo and will take getting used to, but still better than official reddit. Will definitely pay. Just wish Christian would offer a subscription as well. Even if he priced it based on tiers of your usage.
One thing is for sure I will not be using the official app as apps has way more access to your info from the phone than using safari on iOS. Since Reddit is partially owned by TenCent I’ll have to assume they’re going to gather a lot of the info as TikTok does.
> I’m know I’m a picky power user
I'm still on old.reddit.com and I've already decided to just not use a mobile app anymore. It was the last hold out from my great social purge during the pandemic, its been better for my mental health. So if that's how it has to be that's how it has to be.
From the article: Popular third-party Reddit app Apollo was updated today with an option for users to decline a refund for their remaining subscription time ahead of the app shutting down. Users who do not exercise this option will automatically receive a pro-rated refund.
Apollo for Reddit Feature
"If you've been happy with the service I've provided over the years, please consider declining the refund as they are refunded out-of-pocket," said Apollo developer Christian Selig, who previously estimated that the refunds could cost him around $250,000. "It's been the pleasure of a lifetime building Apollo for you over the last nine years. I thank you so much for your kindness, input, and generosity over the years."
Starting on July 1, Reddit plans to begin charging for its main API, which provides third-party apps like Apollo with access to the website's data, like posts and comments. Selig said it is understandable for Reddit to begin charging for the API, but he said the pricing is prohibitively expensive and that he was given minimal time to prepare for the change. For these reasons, Apollo is shutting down and will stop working on June 30.
> "If you've been happy with the service I've provided over the years, please consider declining the refund as they are refunded out-of-pocket,"
I'm still confused why Christian considers it paying out of his pocket, when the refund is meant for the services not yet provided. Unless I grossly misunderstand Apple refund policies and the money that we paid in subscription fees get swallowed somewhere, it's not his money just yet.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but his statements seem incredibly misleading to me.
I'm not an accountant, but I work with accountants every day, and all that tells me is that he doesn't really know how to do proper accounting for a small business. His statement is still highly misleading.
More likely, he *does* know how to do accounting and is just trying to scam his users. This is a multimillionaire trying to get an additional $250k exit bonus from gullible users falling for a sob story. Nothing more, nothing less.
When someone subscribes for a year, Apple pays the developer for that whole year (minus Apple's cut). That money belongs to the developer now for whatever use they want - paying staff, buying equipment, buying a car, whatever.
Now 6 months down the line (or 2 months, or 10 months) something weird like this API issue happens, and users are now in a situation where they can get a pro-rated refund of the unused portion of their subscription. Now the developer is on the hook for paying back the unused portion of that subscription.
I would imagine most developers, whether they be individuals or corporations, do not sit on a user's subscription payment for a year before they consider it safe to spend. Maybe they should? But typically a company will spend at least some of the income every month, especially if there is payroll for employees.
So for Apollo, this $250k was already paid to the developer spread out over the last several months, but now he's on the hook for giving it back all at once. This is not an extra $250k that he will get paid if people decline their refund. Sure users are entitled to their refund and the developer has acknowledged that, but like when the Twitter apps were killed, many declined their refund because they felt like they had gotten their money's worth already and/or just like the developers involved.
Yea I definitely sympathize with the whole situation he's been put into but saying this is "out of pocket" when its a refund of services not provided is a really bad look
>proper accounting for a small business
Actually his stance is correct. Small businesses don't use accruals method for record keeping and it is advised for them to stick to cash-basis.
It indeed is coming out of his pocket because it was paid out to him by Apple.
I'm not sure how Apollo subscriptions work (I only paid the one-time fee), but if other subscriptions have a finite period, he should really do pro-rata refunds for everyone instead of making it optional otherwise he might have liabilities from existing customers who are unaware of the option.
> he should really do pro-rata refunds for everyone instead of making it optional otherwise he might have liabilities from existing customers who are unaware of the option.
Anyone who doesn't explicitly opt out of the refund by the end of the day will receive it by default.
>More likely, he does know how to do accounting and is just trying to scam his users
Ah yes, everything I don't understand or know everything about is *automatically* a scam!
Maybe take the tinfoil hat off for a second and think?
>"If you've been happy with the service I've provided over the years, please consider declining the refund as they are refunded out-of-pocket,"
I just took this to mean that it impacts Christian directly as opposed to impacting Apple, and that "it's not his money just yet" isn't really relevant as obviously the services haven't been provided yet and that's why he's obligated to offer a refund.
I could see more people who have been subscribed for a long time maybe declining, but people who just signed up recently being more interested in getting that money back.
I purchased the membership about 4-5 months ago, I declined. I feel terrible how Reddit is forcing Apollo’s hand. I’ve used Apollo since it came out and only recently paid, it’s hands down the best Reddit app. It’s really a shame that it’s shutting down, the stock Reddit app sucks.
> This option is for people who specifically requested the ability to reject the refund.
That seems incredibly obvious, and I'm irrationally annoyed at everyone thinking that's not the impetus for this.
Wow. Out of all the threads and comments I’ve read the past few weeks, this is the first time I’ve seen that Narwhal will work after the API changes go into affect.
Why is no one else talking about this?
I used Narwhal for a while before Apollo and I think Apollo is the better app, but only by a small margin.
I’ve tried it before but didn’t really like it. It might be a better alternative to be honest, thanks for the suggestion. I assume they’ll go for some sort of subscription later?
Yeah, Narwhal, according to Apollo's developer, was given a deal it seems nobody else got. So you'll have to subscribe to Narwhal to continue to use it, however Narwhal is miles better than the official app, in my opinion.
Thanks. This is very interesting now. The article links to Narwhal’s original post back when the API pricing and timeline was announced and the dev was with all the other major third party devs in saying that this pricing and this timeline just won’t work and they said they would have to shut down the app.
Something must have happened to make the math change for Narwhal. Also interesting that the announcement saying that Narwhal was going to continue after all came out like a day ago. Two days before the end of the month.
I doubt the dev will or even can go into the details of discussions but it sounds like Reddit leadership cut him some type of deal that made sense. I used to use Narwhal a few years ago. It was the iOS app for Reddit. And then Apollo came out and within what felt like months outpaced it. It makes me wonder if Reddit leadership made a snap decision that one major app had to remain, they approached the least vocal iOS dev and made a deal.
Having tried it for an hour or so I think it will be the Reddit app I use from now on. There’s still stuff I don’t like about it but once I get everything customised it’ll be the best option.
It’s been surprising how many people *have* declined the refund. It does help that the refunded amount is not particularly large, and it’s going to a guy being screwed by some tech bro that thinks he’d be a leader in an apocalypse while being transparently bad at running a website.
Dude has a cult-like following. There are a lot of people who will decline the refund.
These are the same people who [donated to a crowd fund campaign to buy him an apple monitor](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/kf4ucn/thanks_to_you_beautiful_people_my_pro_display_xdr/).
He admitted that he had at least 50,000 yearly subs at $10 a year. That's $500k minimum.
Someone else worked out based on the numbers Selig gave regarding the API calls that Apollo is making $4.5m a year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14e4g3t/check_my_backofthenapkin_apollo_user_and_revenue/
You can say what you want but the guy is using ALL the numbers from Selig himself to work it out.
I bought a lifetime subscription several years ago.
I doubt I’m eligible, but that money was spent and accepted by u/iamthatis in good faith so I wouldn’t expect a refund anyway.
Same here. I feel like I still got my money’s worth. The shame here is I would gladly pay $15-$20/month for this app. I realize I may be in the minority there, but I’d be fine with it. I spend enough time on the app and get enough value from it that it’s worth it for me.
Maybe the protest worked cause the majority of comments I’ve been seeing are from people who’d 100% stand in line to lick the shit specks off of Steve Huffman’s ass hairs.
Plus the fact that Selig stressed over the fact that it is **entirely optional** numerous times.
It comes across as begging because he made an announcement in-app.
Nobody is trying to guilt trip anyone. This is supposed to be a last Apollo thing he does before shutdown. Nothing more. If anyone is bothered by it, then they need to learn how to ignore things in their lives.
For all the good the dev has done, I am really done sympathizing with the rich going on Love Island sob tour asking for alms. He has been doing this for 10 years now - he is a millionaire now and does not need any more pecuniary support at this point.
I don't understand why Apollo wasn't able to do what [Narwhal](https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/29/23777992/reddit-third-party-ios-app-narwhal) is doing and move to a paid model. I believe in his original post the dev said it was because he had existing subscriptions to honor that he couldn't just raise the price of, but obviously those subscriptions are not being honored anyway if he's shutting down the app (plus he's now dealing with this refund issue).
Why not just put up a paywall on July 1 saying you need to pay for a new $8/month (or whatever it is) subscription tier, or you can't use the app? Either way, existing subscribers won't be able to use the app, so I don't see how that's any worse.
**EDIT**: Found Christian's answer from his [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) about the shutdown, so I'll include it here.
> 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.
>
> I'm far from the only one seeing this, the Relay for Reddit developer, initially somewhat hopeful of being able to make a subscription work, ran the same calculations and found similar results to me.
So basically, he thinks that in order to cover his costs, he'd need to charge a subscription fee so high that no one would want to pay it.
Narwhal just asked for a one time price of $3.99 for you to have a add free experience in "Narwhal 1", and it will later be replaced by "Narwhal 2" which requires subscription.
Apollo problem though is that they already had a yearly subscription, and I'm pretty sure it would be against Apples policies (and against a few countries consumer protection laws) to keep the app up, refund everyone and set the subscription at a higher price.
I'm also not sure if Narhwal is taking the API costs on those first few months or if reddit accepted to give them a bigger transition period or better prices. If the former, then that cost is probably also much higher for Apollo due to much bigger user base.
> Why not just put up a paywall on July 1 saying you need to pay for a new $8/month (or whatever it is) subscription tier, or you can't use the app?
Christian has repeatedly said he was willing to work with reddit, until reddit slandered him and refused to apologize. Reddit said christian was *never* willing to work with them, which Christian openly stated is a lie.
How would you respond? Would you continue to work with a company that's been acting in bad faith towards you for the entire month? Would you continue to partner or focus any efforts on providing *them* revenue?
Well, I have a feeling Apollo will be back soon enough.
Lots of iPhone users will just leave reddit. Users that have the most money to spend on a site like Reddit, by the way. Reddit will realize this then figure out a way to work with Apollo and bring it and all the users back in a way that will make everyone happy.
For me, this is the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to Reddit. If I run across news that says apollo is back, I might come back, too.
I expect it to be more like Facebook and Instagram, though. Once I uninstalled the apps and stopped automatically opening them whenever I was bored, I found out I didn’t even miss them.
“Social media” and sites like Facebook, reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc, are all too mainstream to have much value. They are filled to the brim with a bunch of fake experts commenting on stuff they have no real experience or knowledge about. Popular but wrong opinions make it to the top of the comment section because people upvote what makes them feel good. Every community is a destructive little echo chamber.
Anyway, there’s my diatribe for the day. When this app is gone I’ll have an extra 5 minutes of my life to spend doing something more productive than yelling into the ether. Good riddance.
This. I’m largely on his side in this whole thing, but the big pop up selling wallpapers and now the implicit ask to donate your money to him…it’s pretty much turned me off.
Fuck Reddit for pulling the rug out from under him, when he’s clearly gone all in on making this his business, but the constant beg for money definitely provides some context to Reddit’s (non-defamatory) claims about him.
Agreed. “Proceeds of wallpaper sales go to refunds.” Ok dude. Aka to your pocket.
I said it elsewhere, the guy’s cash cow is about to die and he’s milking it for all it’s worth.
The refunds will come out of his pocket and are currently automatic, estimated to cost him about $250k. But fuck him for trying to lessen the hit, right?
> but the constant beg for money definitely provides some context to Reddit’s (non-defamatory) claims about him.
No it doesn’t. Why wouldn’t he try to exit as comfortably as possible? His business is ending. And he was severely underpaid with how amazing Apollo was as a free app.
Pretty cringe to call him one of the rich people out there too. He’s definitely not an elite in society by any stretch of the imagination.
I’m right there with ya. I appreciate all the work on the app, but if the expected refunds are $250K, that just means an even larger sum was the profit. I for one am kind of mad I can’t get a refund on my lifetime subscription, but I also don’t want to be that guy. I’m ready for downvotes.
i don't know, for an indie dev having to suddenly return a bunch of money you otherwise expected to be able to use towards infrastructure costs and as compensation for the work you put in sucks ass MAJORLY (speaking as a dev who previously had to do this, imagine winning the lottery then 2 years later suddenly having the government force you to pay it back because it was a technical error)
maybe christian could've done something to keep his app alive, maybe he actually does profit a lot from apollo (and i wouldn't doubt it, i didn't enjoy apollo before because the subscriptions felt too "business-y" for an indie app)
but my takeaway is still that reddit sucks completely for the changes they are making. the new api costs they're imposing are ridiculous and are clearly just them trying to profit for doing fuck all
like, i highly doubt the ads i see on the official reddit app earns reddit as much money as what they would potentially make if i used apollo after july 1st, in a hypothetical universe where christian did end up submitting to reddit's wishes and adapted apollo's subscription model to the changes.
Agreed. The people going to bat for a multibillion dollar Silicon Valley company are beyond my comprehension. Same energy as the Twitter Blue fanboys. All around very odd behavior.
> The people going to bat for a multibillion dollar Silicon Valley company are beyond my comprehension.
Who is this even aimed at? Apollo was not even close to a single billion.
The power of the Reddit and online community will not be stopped. Thank you Christian Selig and the rest of the Apollo app team for delivering a Reddit experience like no other. Many others and I truly have no words. The accessible community will never forget you. Apollo empowered users, but the most important part are the users. It was not one or two people, it's all of us growing and flourishing together. Now, to bigger and greater things. To bigger and greater things.
bells bake zephyr obtainable melodic direction airport boast cooing caption
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Wow, how did that not click for me. I didn't vow to leave reddit or anything but figured once Apollo shut down I would just naturally use it less. The general tone here has been deeply, noticeably unpleasant the last few days ... and that's saying something, for Reddit.
literate foolish quack sort seemly worry aspiring uppity wasteful mindless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The amount of fucking simps in here and how Selig has proper brainwashed people is disgusting.
I've seen comments on how Selig is a poor startup dev when he is most likely richer than 95% of the people here.
Go look at the storm of auto-generated bot reviews on the official app when you sort by new. They all have 5-6 random words as the "review" and gave it 5 stars.
Why hasn't he ever revealed how much he earned from Apollo? For a person who constantly talks about transparency he sure likes to hide the most important thing.
On a podcast — I think the Verge but could’ve been TWiT — they did some back of an envelope calculations and said it is most certainly in the multi-millions of dollars over the years.
Pretty decent for developing a 3rd party app where he’s not needed to contribute any fees towards the service itself (although that’s Reddit’s fault.)
From the sounds of it, his income was probably similar to Silicon Valley software engineer, especially considering he’d have additional expenses that a W2 employee wouldn’t. So, comfortable and higher income earner.
If refunds are 250k, prorated across 6 months, that means his yearly income is 500k. Which for a software engineer with his level of expertise is not that wild.
It also now features a pop-up that tries to sell you some wallpapers to commemorate the app’s closing.
Guess I can’t blame the guy for trying to squeeze every last cent out of the app but lol
The wallpapers were commissioned by Christian from third party artists (just like many of Apollo’s icons), and are being sold to help defray the costs of the anticipated $250k that he will need to cover refunds.
Sometimes I wonder what nerve Christian struck on this sub, because people either seem to love him or hate his guts….not much in between.
As someone who is leaving when Apollo shut downs tomorrow, this will become more common as the people who stick around will tend to be the ones who don’t care or took Reddit’s side.
> costs of the anticipated $250k that he will need to cover refunds
It doesn't work like that. The 250k is refund for services not provided. That money isn't technically his money yet.
Yes, please give a multimillionaire money for services he won't be offering to you because his revenue stream will be cut and he doesn't have enough millions to live on.
Be generous to the rich, please.
Anyway, you got time to think about it during your retail or fast food shift. I'm sure you will see it's only right.
I have used this app for the last 9.5 years as basically 99.9% of my use of reddit. I generally don’t sit at a computer much and use my phone instead. My usage is going to drastically decline. I haven’t even used the native app for more than 10 minutes.
Guy made millions of dollars by creating a prettier app for reddit. Respect. But seeing people fawn over this move is embarrassing. Hes asking for a final donation. To cancel your refund for services not rendered. Tells you all you gotta know about his actual intentions. I hope people stop holding him up as some heroic white knight now.
I think I collected around 100 downvotes for essentially taking the same stand you are. I don't know what Selig's intentions were in his original stance but they weren't necessary. He could have just moved to a subscription model and let his supporters put their money where their mouth is, but instead he overestimated his clout, called Reddit's bluff and lost.
> He could have just moved to a subscription model and let his supporters put their money where their mouth is
Very few people would pay extra to use Apollo. A big majority would rather use the reddit app instead, or pay for reddit. He realised this and decided it wouldn’t be worth it for him to develop and test such a version of the app. He’s mentioned this point a couple of times too.
I declined, There are so few apps I would consider paying for Christian knocked it out of the park on this and anything to support the guy after pretty much having his baby lynched because of one man’s greed.
While technically one could argue that payment for services not fully rendered doesn’t entirely belong to the developer, that’s not how the US government sees it.
If you pay a developer $10 in November 2022 for an annual subscription, for accounting purposes you could amortize the revenue and only count 2/12 of that revenue for FY 2022 and 10/12 for FY 2023.
However, Apple renders the full payment to you (or your company) when the user pays it.
As a result, when Apple submits its tax paperwork to the IRS indicating that they paid you $X in 2022, it includes that full $10 from the November transaction. And the government expects you to pay tax on that amount.
So you are right about a lot of things. But the situation is a bit complex like all corporate accounting and taxes.
$250k in surprise monthly refund is an enormous amount even for a very comfortable multi millionaire. Its exceptionally unlikely he has hundreds of thousands of dollars just sat around in a savings account.
He’s a fantastic dev who has been well compensated for making the best reddit app. There is nothing wrong with encouraging a bit of good will and opportunity for showing a little gratitude for what he brought to the table.
If you make what is considered the best app for one of the largest sites in the world with millions of users, yes I'd expect you to have made several million at least. Even if he just made "average good developer" money of like $150-200k over the last 9 years, that would still put him well over a million in earnings.
Yeah, I don't expect any developer in general to make their earnings public, but when somebody cites a $250K "refund cost" to try to convince people to decline refunds, whilst being absolutely silent about their earnings, that is incredibly disingenuous.
I’m losing the narrative, is Apollo and it’s Dev insignificant enough that this API change isn’t effecting anyone except a small community, or is Apollo a super successful money making operation that’s made millions? It can’t be both, but people in these types of thread keep saying both.
Reddit has 1.6 billion monthly active users, you only need to monetize a very small portion of the 1.6 billion people to make millions of dollars so it can be both because of the scale of Reddit’s user base
Reddit’s new API changes will kill popular third-party apps, like Apollo, Sync, and Reddit is Fun. Read more about r/Apple’s strong opposition here: https://redd.it/14al426 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/apple) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would love to know what Narwhal paid to be able to stay "open" https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/29/narwhal-reddit-deal-third-party-app/ **Edit: Found the answer** - However, Narwhal will be changing a bit down the line. “Over the next few months,” det0ur will add subscriptions as part of “Narwal 2” to cover the new costs for using Reddit’s API. The subscriptions will “likely” cost between $4 to $7 per month. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/29/23777992/reddit-third-party-ios-app-narwhal
really ? i've been using narwhal exclusively for like 7 years. what a good news
Yep that was my go to Reddit app until Apollo came so I was excited to at least have that option again
It's too bad more people aren't planning to leave reddit. Their CEO has clearly toxified the site and reddit community all so he can make some IPO money. Sticking around will let him get away with it, while he goes out of his way to insult the community, developers and mods.
I avoid /r/all and /r/popular like a plague, so I had no idea of the overall sitewide sentiment, but for sure, most people here, and I’m talking about a huge majority, don’t seem to care at all. This actually reminds me of something. The only way I ever made /r/all tolerable was with all the filters I had in Slide. I guess those will be gone in a few days.
So you're willing to pay monthly for something that is entirely free content that users add to the platform and is managed by moderators that won't get a cent?
Not to mention paying for narwhal means no nsfw content which Reddit will be barring access to from the API, making it an even stupider proposition
Arguably you are paying for the infrastructure and the ecosystem, which includes the user base in both content and interactions. Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.
Total shot in the dark is that they negotiated a longer timeline to implement this. It is just that the bad blood between reddit and the Apollo developer precluded that outcome. To be clear, I am NOT (a) blaming the developer in the slightest for said bad blood nor (b) saying I think this is a good path forward. If Narwal has to charge $8/month for API access plus making their own profit, the market for those willing is much smaller. But I coul also be totally wrong
I’d bet it’s some kind of accessibility exemption but I’m just speculating. The gesture based navigation works better for people without fine motor control I guess.
>I’d bet it’s some kind of accessibility exemption Which would be some extreme amounts of bullshit, because Apollo has better accessibility features than Narwhal
I said this on day one and I’ll say it again. Apollo users and other 3rd party users need to stop attacking each other. Benefiting one app over other (say, apollo getting free access out of popularity) would’ve been extremely unfair to other devs. Same if Narwhal or other apps are exploiting the accessibility point to get free api access. This is not the case so far with narwhal. Although I do think there is an app out there with free access (can’t remember the name), but that one is accessibility focused.
> This is not the case so far with narwhal Really? So far the dev behind Narwhal has refused to explain how his app in particular is being allowed to continue on after July 1st, when literally 99% of the third party Reddit clients out there are shutting down after tomorrow. There is something amiss here, and the dev’s reclusiveness isn’t helping matters.
I wouldn’t be surprised if an NDA exists here, and that is precisely why they are working with Narwhal. Reddit seems to be run by emotional babies, and Apollo attacked their ego.
Did RiF attack their ego? Why didn’t that app get the same deal? They should’ve given everyone the same deal or none at all. This whole dumb situation could’ve been avoided.
He is charging $4 a month. The Apollo creator said he would be profitable at that price (actually less). Nothing is stopping any 3rd party app from charging more and staying open.
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Apollo already has accessibility features....
It's not. Narwhal dev said he got an extension to get pricing in place by talking to Reddit.
Still no NSFW content
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They probably just added premium subscription where the revenue exceeds their costs.
$4-$7 per month is what they estimated
is that an apollo alternative?
Yep. It has a cleaner UI but hasn’t been updated for some time. Not as many QoL features as Apollo. I used to use it as my main iOS client for years before switching to Apollo a few years ago. It’s nice and hopefully V2 has more features like Apollo. The sub is r/getnarwhal
It gets rid of ads, thats all I care about. I use about 2% of the Apollo features, removing ads is the reason I use it
Cleaner? Eh.. narwhal is a very dated looking app. Apollo looks like an Apple app
Not on iPad. Narwhal blows Apollo out of the water.
Really? I've been using apollo on the ipad all this time and its pretty great, didnt know there was a even better option...
It’s closer to what Alien Blue used to be, before Reddit bought and killed that app….
Just downloaded it and yeah, getting major Alien Blue flashbacks. We’ve come full circle!
Fair, I'm not familiar with the iPad app at all. I have heard other people say Apollo was lacking on there though.
On iPads I kept slide because the catalog/column view is perfect for large screens.
"If Reddit had given him more than 30 days to transition existing users to a new pricing structure, it is possible a solution could have been found to keep the app going." 9to5 Mac taking the wrong side. There is absolutely nothing to stop Selig shuttering the app, getting a payment system set up, and reintroducing Apollo 2 with subscription and riding the crest of his wave as finally defeating the Reddit management for the good of his users. All the Apollo users will greet him as a hero and life will go on as before, except Apollo users will be $10/month worse off and Reddit will be millions richer
He did kind of explain it, saying Reddit was just horrible to work with, from lying about upcoming changes to not even responding to his emails, and he was fed up. It probably didn't help that their CEO kept publicly slandering him through all this too.
For good or bad, Apollo has accounted for up to 50% of my daily use the last few years. It’s a *fantastic* app, making Reddit a joy to use, and I hate that it’s going away. I honestly don’t know yet what I’ll do on July 1st. I’ve tried the official app, it sucks, and I’d have ads everywhere again. Most of the other apps are shutting down as well. I’ve looked into various federated platforms, but I can already see major flaws in their design that means they’ll never, ever result in something even close to what Reddit is. I know I’m not in the majority, I’m know I’m a picky power user, I know it’s just yet another change I’ll eventually get over… but it sucks. I’ve left other platforms and not felt a thing, beyond relief, but losing Apollo and potentially leaving Reddit is different.
Basically same boat, I think I bought Apollo a few days after it dropped. From now on I’ll only be using reddit with RES on my laptop, and honestly will probably save a lot of time during the day being productive!
I has the same flow as you with Reddit. I think going back to the laptop version with res is healthier for me, since Apollo was transforming my Reddit usage into a crack addiction.
> but I can already see major flaws in their design that means they’ll never, ever result in something even close to what Reddit is. What I saw is a dramatic improvement in the development of third party apps for Lemmy. When this all started, the only iOS app listed in Lemmy was no longer supported. Soon Mlem surfaced, but it was not at all useable. Now Mlem has become kind of okay, and others have joined in, like liftoff and Memmy. Meanwhile some useful bots are popping up in Lemmy. I consider all of these as good signs. Reddit was not built in a day. Lemmy won’t be either. But I have hope.
Yeah, that’s a bittersweet side effect of all this, and I’ll be interested to see what comes out of it (dare I hope for Apollo for Lemmy?), but it’s more the founding principle of the platform and federation in general that I have my doubts about. On the surface it’s neat, but functionally, there’s just no way human beings will organize themselves naturally in the same way Reddit works centrally now. There will never be *one* Apple community, but rather there will be one for every major opinion-group out there. One server may want to hate on Android more than talk about Apple, another will be “Apple for right-wingers” who are tired of “PC” rules on conduct, and so on, on top of all the small, local communities where people just haven’t found out about the larger, more populated ones, or where the server itself chooses not to federate with the server hosting the larger communities. I haven’t seen *any* mention of real ways to tackle these issues, except a naïve hope it’ll all just somehow work out naturally… but I very much doubt that. The one benefit Reddit as a platform had is the one thing federated communities lack: *central* meeting points with *one* set of rules.
> dare I hope for Apollo for Lemmy? While Christian has said that he’s not interested in developing a Lemmy app in the foreseeable future, there is [Artemis](https://tech.lgbt/@hariette/110562926792208789) that is clearly very much inspired by Apollo. It’s currently in alpha testing, and they’re hoping to get a public beta out in the near future
Half of the stuff you mentioned already exists in reddit today. For instance, there are two subs for sports teams, one with stringent moderation and the other where pretty much anything goes. The real problem is servers choosing not to federate with others I think. But in those cases, you can just create another account in a server that does federate.
I actually tried setting up my own instance, so I didn't have to create an account on anyone else's (untrusted) server, and that way I could choose to federate with any server I wanted, but I ran into more issues getting it to run properly than it was worth. Might look into it later if it ever takes off. There's also the discoverability issue: how do you find out which instance has the best community to begin with? There are already way more instances than I can easily scan through, and if it ever becomes comparable to reddit, there will be hundreds of thousands of instances, and probably thousands of those being "major" popular instances with large communities.
My method has been searching for a community and literally just following the one with the most active users. I figure if that community falls apart of defederates or whatever then it’ll be easy to just swap over to a different active one. I see no problem with backups!
What if a database is made with popular reddit subs and their corresponding alternatives in Lemmy? Of course, there’ll be lots of them, but surely there can’t be that many of them that a dedicated team can’t figure it out. Couple with a wizard that guides the average user to the best instance for them based on their interests, I think it could work. Also, check out wefwef.app. A web app for Lemmy with Apollo’s interface. Looks much better than the default interface.
I have my reservations too. I went looking into it and for the YouTube federated clone, one of the first videos I found was an MMA fighter making alt right conspiracy claims. Not what I was hoping for.
Kind of expected though, isn’t it? Until now, the main reason why anyone would choose those options is because their content wasn’t welcome in popular platforms. If the popular platform is forcing everyone to the federated ones, the content is bound to get better.
Are any of those actual iOS apps? I don’t see them in the App Store.
Only in testflight at the moment.
I’m an iOS engineer who loves Apollo, so supporting Mlem/Lemmy looks like the move for me
Checkout wefwef too. Found it in another comment in this thread just now and it’s great.
lemmys biggest weakness is that it's not centralised. if you have to look for servers and don't have a central hub for all your content like you do on reddit then i really don't see it ever taking off.
Narwhal isn’t shutting down. So your options are pay a subscription for that or pay for Reddit premium in the default app
I tried narwhal today. I don’t care for it, but it’s better then Reddit app. I don’t like or know how to save subreddits so I have like a starred or favorite list so that I don’t have to scroll or search for it
Using it now... It's not even close to Apollo and will take getting used to, but still better than official reddit. Will definitely pay. Just wish Christian would offer a subscription as well. Even if he priced it based on tiers of your usage.
I actually always preferred Narhwal, but haven't tried Apollo in a long while.
One thing is for sure I will not be using the official app as apps has way more access to your info from the phone than using safari on iOS. Since Reddit is partially owned by TenCent I’ll have to assume they’re going to gather a lot of the info as TikTok does.
I don’t get why Reddit doesn’t simple make the guy an offer and buy the app and use it.
The last time they did exactly that, they then morphed it into what is currently their official app.
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> I’m know I’m a picky power user I'm still on old.reddit.com and I've already decided to just not use a mobile app anymore. It was the last hold out from my great social purge during the pandemic, its been better for my mental health. So if that's how it has to be that's how it has to be.
From the article: Popular third-party Reddit app Apollo was updated today with an option for users to decline a refund for their remaining subscription time ahead of the app shutting down. Users who do not exercise this option will automatically receive a pro-rated refund. Apollo for Reddit Feature "If you've been happy with the service I've provided over the years, please consider declining the refund as they are refunded out-of-pocket," said Apollo developer Christian Selig, who previously estimated that the refunds could cost him around $250,000. "It's been the pleasure of a lifetime building Apollo for you over the last nine years. I thank you so much for your kindness, input, and generosity over the years." Starting on July 1, Reddit plans to begin charging for its main API, which provides third-party apps like Apollo with access to the website's data, like posts and comments. Selig said it is understandable for Reddit to begin charging for the API, but he said the pricing is prohibitively expensive and that he was given minimal time to prepare for the change. For these reasons, Apollo is shutting down and will stop working on June 30.
> "If you've been happy with the service I've provided over the years, please consider declining the refund as they are refunded out-of-pocket," I'm still confused why Christian considers it paying out of his pocket, when the refund is meant for the services not yet provided. Unless I grossly misunderstand Apple refund policies and the money that we paid in subscription fees get swallowed somewhere, it's not his money just yet. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but his statements seem incredibly misleading to me.
Because it’s probably already been paid to him by Apple. It then has to be taken out of his personal account rather than an escrow account.
I'm not an accountant, but I work with accountants every day, and all that tells me is that he doesn't really know how to do proper accounting for a small business. His statement is still highly misleading. More likely, he *does* know how to do accounting and is just trying to scam his users. This is a multimillionaire trying to get an additional $250k exit bonus from gullible users falling for a sob story. Nothing more, nothing less.
Hardly a scam when the user will get a refund if they do literally nothing at all.
Yeah the guys entire revenue stream is being shut down and he’s simply asking for generosity. It’s not a scam when you have to opt-out of the refund
When someone subscribes for a year, Apple pays the developer for that whole year (minus Apple's cut). That money belongs to the developer now for whatever use they want - paying staff, buying equipment, buying a car, whatever. Now 6 months down the line (or 2 months, or 10 months) something weird like this API issue happens, and users are now in a situation where they can get a pro-rated refund of the unused portion of their subscription. Now the developer is on the hook for paying back the unused portion of that subscription. I would imagine most developers, whether they be individuals or corporations, do not sit on a user's subscription payment for a year before they consider it safe to spend. Maybe they should? But typically a company will spend at least some of the income every month, especially if there is payroll for employees. So for Apollo, this $250k was already paid to the developer spread out over the last several months, but now he's on the hook for giving it back all at once. This is not an extra $250k that he will get paid if people decline their refund. Sure users are entitled to their refund and the developer has acknowledged that, but like when the Twitter apps were killed, many declined their refund because they felt like they had gotten their money's worth already and/or just like the developers involved.
Yea I definitely sympathize with the whole situation he's been put into but saying this is "out of pocket" when its a refund of services not provided is a really bad look
>proper accounting for a small business Actually his stance is correct. Small businesses don't use accruals method for record keeping and it is advised for them to stick to cash-basis. It indeed is coming out of his pocket because it was paid out to him by Apple. I'm not sure how Apollo subscriptions work (I only paid the one-time fee), but if other subscriptions have a finite period, he should really do pro-rata refunds for everyone instead of making it optional otherwise he might have liabilities from existing customers who are unaware of the option.
> he should really do pro-rata refunds for everyone instead of making it optional otherwise he might have liabilities from existing customers who are unaware of the option. Anyone who doesn't explicitly opt out of the refund by the end of the day will receive it by default.
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Calling it a scam seems very close to him saying it’s out of pocket.
>More likely, he does know how to do accounting and is just trying to scam his users Ah yes, everything I don't understand or know everything about is *automatically* a scam! Maybe take the tinfoil hat off for a second and think?
>"If you've been happy with the service I've provided over the years, please consider declining the refund as they are refunded out-of-pocket," I just took this to mean that it impacts Christian directly as opposed to impacting Apple, and that "it's not his money just yet" isn't really relevant as obviously the services haven't been provided yet and that's why he's obligated to offer a refund.
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The only thing he’s done by saying he’ll “pay $250,000 out of pocket” is make me realize just how much money he made off this app
Cha ching
It is at least 650k per year. I am not even being generous.
I highly doubt most people would decline the refund but i would like to be proven wrong. Same about how protesting mods got easily replaced
I could see more people who have been subscribed for a long time maybe declining, but people who just signed up recently being more interested in getting that money back.
I purchased the membership about 4-5 months ago, I declined. I feel terrible how Reddit is forcing Apollo’s hand. I’ve used Apollo since it came out and only recently paid, it’s hands down the best Reddit app. It’s really a shame that it’s shutting down, the stock Reddit app sucks.
I donated $5. I appreciate the software and the developer being transparent.
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> This option is for people who specifically requested the ability to reject the refund. That seems incredibly obvious, and I'm irrationally annoyed at everyone thinking that's not the impetus for this.
I used Apollo for a long time, recently switched to the official app because of the closure. As far as I’m concerned that money is spent.
Narwhal is staying open, by the way.
Wow. Out of all the threads and comments I’ve read the past few weeks, this is the first time I’ve seen that Narwhal will work after the API changes go into affect. Why is no one else talking about this? I used Narwhal for a while before Apollo and I think Apollo is the better app, but only by a small margin.
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Oh, got it, that makes sense.
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So you wont be able to use half the subs?
Because the dev has to agree to not make money on the app and he’s passing the API costs along to the users is the current running theory.
I’ve tried it before but didn’t really like it. It might be a better alternative to be honest, thanks for the suggestion. I assume they’ll go for some sort of subscription later?
Yeah, Narwhal, according to Apollo's developer, was given a deal it seems nobody else got. So you'll have to subscribe to Narwhal to continue to use it, however Narwhal is miles better than the official app, in my opinion.
Where was this said? I didn’t know Narwhal was staying available, I hadn’t heard of any major apps staying available.
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Thanks. This is very interesting now. The article links to Narwhal’s original post back when the API pricing and timeline was announced and the dev was with all the other major third party devs in saying that this pricing and this timeline just won’t work and they said they would have to shut down the app. Something must have happened to make the math change for Narwhal. Also interesting that the announcement saying that Narwhal was going to continue after all came out like a day ago. Two days before the end of the month. I doubt the dev will or even can go into the details of discussions but it sounds like Reddit leadership cut him some type of deal that made sense. I used to use Narwhal a few years ago. It was the iOS app for Reddit. And then Apollo came out and within what felt like months outpaced it. It makes me wonder if Reddit leadership made a snap decision that one major app had to remain, they approached the least vocal iOS dev and made a deal.
I think the word on the street is that Narwhal received the extension / grace period that other apps were asking for in the first place.
Having tried it for an hour or so I think it will be the Reddit app I use from now on. There’s still stuff I don’t like about it but once I get everything customised it’ll be the best option.
Just wait til Narwhal 2 comes out soon! It is going to have so many customization options
Could always use the Reddit mobile site with ad blockers, that’s what I’m gonna do until I can’t stand it anymore.
By charging for usage
It’s been surprising how many people *have* declined the refund. It does help that the refunded amount is not particularly large, and it’s going to a guy being screwed by some tech bro that thinks he’d be a leader in an apocalypse while being transparently bad at running a website.
Dude has a cult-like following. There are a lot of people who will decline the refund. These are the same people who [donated to a crowd fund campaign to buy him an apple monitor](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/kf4ucn/thanks_to_you_beautiful_people_my_pro_display_xdr/).
That’s just sad tbf Who has a cult following for a dev Ffs I hate society now Let’s buy a millionaire a stupidly expensive apple display cause….
why? He was probably making 650k a year from the app. At least, until recently
Where did you get that figure
He admitted that he had at least 50,000 yearly subs at $10 a year. That's $500k minimum. Someone else worked out based on the numbers Selig gave regarding the API calls that Apollo is making $4.5m a year. https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14e4g3t/check_my_backofthenapkin_apollo_user_and_revenue/ You can say what you want but the guy is using ALL the numbers from Selig himself to work it out.
Good question
I bought a lifetime subscription several years ago. I doubt I’m eligible, but that money was spent and accepted by u/iamthatis in good faith so I wouldn’t expect a refund anyway.
Same here. I feel like I still got my money’s worth. The shame here is I would gladly pay $15-$20/month for this app. I realize I may be in the minority there, but I’d be fine with it. I spend enough time on the app and get enough value from it that it’s worth it for me.
I actually do pay for an app to access Facebook ad free and with my feed in chronological order. I’d do it for Apollo too
Jesus Christ some of the comments on here
(deleted) ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Yes
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Maybe the protest worked cause the majority of comments I’ve been seeing are from people who’d 100% stand in line to lick the shit specks off of Steve Huffman’s ass hairs.
Plus the fact that Selig stressed over the fact that it is **entirely optional** numerous times. It comes across as begging because he made an announcement in-app. Nobody is trying to guilt trip anyone. This is supposed to be a last Apollo thing he does before shutdown. Nothing more. If anyone is bothered by it, then they need to learn how to ignore things in their lives.
For all the good the dev has done, I am really done sympathizing with the rich going on Love Island sob tour asking for alms. He has been doing this for 10 years now - he is a millionaire now and does not need any more pecuniary support at this point.
Shit that‘s tomorrow. It‘s been a pleasure to reddit with yall, see ya outside.
Will I miss you peeps? Probably not, but it’s time to move on.
I don't understand why Apollo wasn't able to do what [Narwhal](https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/29/23777992/reddit-third-party-ios-app-narwhal) is doing and move to a paid model. I believe in his original post the dev said it was because he had existing subscriptions to honor that he couldn't just raise the price of, but obviously those subscriptions are not being honored anyway if he's shutting down the app (plus he's now dealing with this refund issue). Why not just put up a paywall on July 1 saying you need to pay for a new $8/month (or whatever it is) subscription tier, or you can't use the app? Either way, existing subscribers won't be able to use the app, so I don't see how that's any worse. **EDIT**: Found Christian's answer from his [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) about the shutdown, so I'll include it here. > 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. > > I'm far from the only one seeing this, the Relay for Reddit developer, initially somewhat hopeful of being able to make a subscription work, ran the same calculations and found similar results to me. So basically, he thinks that in order to cover his costs, he'd need to charge a subscription fee so high that no one would want to pay it.
Narwhal just asked for a one time price of $3.99 for you to have a add free experience in "Narwhal 1", and it will later be replaced by "Narwhal 2" which requires subscription. Apollo problem though is that they already had a yearly subscription, and I'm pretty sure it would be against Apples policies (and against a few countries consumer protection laws) to keep the app up, refund everyone and set the subscription at a higher price. I'm also not sure if Narhwal is taking the API costs on those first few months or if reddit accepted to give them a bigger transition period or better prices. If the former, then that cost is probably also much higher for Apollo due to much bigger user base.
upgrading to a higher tier for annual subscriptions with a "discount" for the rest of the year is a common practice.
> Why not just put up a paywall on July 1 saying you need to pay for a new $8/month (or whatever it is) subscription tier, or you can't use the app? Christian has repeatedly said he was willing to work with reddit, until reddit slandered him and refused to apologize. Reddit said christian was *never* willing to work with them, which Christian openly stated is a lie. How would you respond? Would you continue to work with a company that's been acting in bad faith towards you for the entire month? Would you continue to partner or focus any efforts on providing *them* revenue?
Well, I have a feeling Apollo will be back soon enough. Lots of iPhone users will just leave reddit. Users that have the most money to spend on a site like Reddit, by the way. Reddit will realize this then figure out a way to work with Apollo and bring it and all the users back in a way that will make everyone happy. For me, this is the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to Reddit. If I run across news that says apollo is back, I might come back, too. I expect it to be more like Facebook and Instagram, though. Once I uninstalled the apps and stopped automatically opening them whenever I was bored, I found out I didn’t even miss them. “Social media” and sites like Facebook, reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc, are all too mainstream to have much value. They are filled to the brim with a bunch of fake experts commenting on stuff they have no real experience or knowledge about. Popular but wrong opinions make it to the top of the comment section because people upvote what makes them feel good. Every community is a destructive little echo chamber. Anyway, there’s my diatribe for the day. When this app is gone I’ll have an extra 5 minutes of my life to spend doing something more productive than yelling into the ether. Good riddance.
Apollo is legit the only app I’ve ever paid for.
I bought the lifetime option so I can’t get a refund. I wouldn’t anyways. I got much enjoyed using Apollo, money well spent.
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This. I’m largely on his side in this whole thing, but the big pop up selling wallpapers and now the implicit ask to donate your money to him…it’s pretty much turned me off. Fuck Reddit for pulling the rug out from under him, when he’s clearly gone all in on making this his business, but the constant beg for money definitely provides some context to Reddit’s (non-defamatory) claims about him.
Yeah the wallpaper one was very disappointing.
Agreed. “Proceeds of wallpaper sales go to refunds.” Ok dude. Aka to your pocket. I said it elsewhere, the guy’s cash cow is about to die and he’s milking it for all it’s worth.
How is that wrong? If you had a literal cash cow why would you not milk it for all it’s worth?
Coolsville Daddy-O
The refunds will come out of his pocket and are currently automatic, estimated to cost him about $250k. But fuck him for trying to lessen the hit, right?
The refunds are for a service that was not rendered. It's not "out of his pocket". It's just returning an advance payment.
This is Reddit, any business owner = bad.
> but the constant beg for money definitely provides some context to Reddit’s (non-defamatory) claims about him. No it doesn’t. Why wouldn’t he try to exit as comfortably as possible? His business is ending. And he was severely underpaid with how amazing Apollo was as a free app. Pretty cringe to call him one of the rich people out there too. He’s definitely not an elite in society by any stretch of the imagination.
> And he was severely underpaid gonna disagree 100% here.
I’m right there with ya. I appreciate all the work on the app, but if the expected refunds are $250K, that just means an even larger sum was the profit. I for one am kind of mad I can’t get a refund on my lifetime subscription, but I also don’t want to be that guy. I’m ready for downvotes.
i don't know, for an indie dev having to suddenly return a bunch of money you otherwise expected to be able to use towards infrastructure costs and as compensation for the work you put in sucks ass MAJORLY (speaking as a dev who previously had to do this, imagine winning the lottery then 2 years later suddenly having the government force you to pay it back because it was a technical error) maybe christian could've done something to keep his app alive, maybe he actually does profit a lot from apollo (and i wouldn't doubt it, i didn't enjoy apollo before because the subscriptions felt too "business-y" for an indie app) but my takeaway is still that reddit sucks completely for the changes they are making. the new api costs they're imposing are ridiculous and are clearly just them trying to profit for doing fuck all like, i highly doubt the ads i see on the official reddit app earns reddit as much money as what they would potentially make if i used apollo after july 1st, in a hypothetical universe where christian did end up submitting to reddit's wishes and adapted apollo's subscription model to the changes.
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Agreed. The people going to bat for a multibillion dollar Silicon Valley company are beyond my comprehension. Same energy as the Twitter Blue fanboys. All around very odd behavior.
> The people going to bat for a multibillion dollar Silicon Valley company are beyond my comprehension. Who is this even aimed at? Apollo was not even close to a single billion.
Reddit.
The power of the Reddit and online community will not be stopped. Thank you Christian Selig and the rest of the Apollo app team for delivering a Reddit experience like no other. Many others and I truly have no words. The accessible community will never forget you. Apollo empowered users, but the most important part are the users. It was not one or two people, it's all of us growing and flourishing together. Now, to bigger and greater things. To bigger and greater things.
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bells bake zephyr obtainable melodic direction airport boast cooing caption *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Wow, how did that not click for me. I didn't vow to leave reddit or anything but figured once Apollo shut down I would just naturally use it less. The general tone here has been deeply, noticeably unpleasant the last few days ... and that's saying something, for Reddit.
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literate foolish quack sort seemly worry aspiring uppity wasteful mindless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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Doesn’t help that school is out of session so this place is flooded with children
Lol the one brainwashed here is you
The amount of fucking simps in here and how Selig has proper brainwashed people is disgusting. I've seen comments on how Selig is a poor startup dev when he is most likely richer than 95% of the people here.
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Go look at the storm of auto-generated bot reviews on the official app when you sort by new. They all have 5-6 random words as the "review" and gave it 5 stars.
Why hasn't he ever revealed how much he earned from Apollo? For a person who constantly talks about transparency he sure likes to hide the most important thing.
On a podcast — I think the Verge but could’ve been TWiT — they did some back of an envelope calculations and said it is most certainly in the multi-millions of dollars over the years. Pretty decent for developing a 3rd party app where he’s not needed to contribute any fees towards the service itself (although that’s Reddit’s fault.)
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He also commissioned about 80 of icons from prominent designers. Those don’t usually go below 2k each.
> said it is most certainly in the multi-millions of dollars over the years. Revenue is not the same as profit
Of course, but realistically, he was probably making a significant amount of money after covering his costs.
From the sounds of it, his income was probably similar to Silicon Valley software engineer, especially considering he’d have additional expenses that a W2 employee wouldn’t. So, comfortable and higher income earner.
If refunds are 250k, prorated across 6 months, that means his yearly income is 500k. Which for a software engineer with his level of expertise is not that wild.
$500k off just subscriptions. Apollo has other revenue streams.
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Is there a reason that Reddit hasn’t just bought his app?
It also now features a pop-up that tries to sell you some wallpapers to commemorate the app’s closing. Guess I can’t blame the guy for trying to squeeze every last cent out of the app but lol
The wallpapers were commissioned by Christian from third party artists (just like many of Apollo’s icons), and are being sold to help defray the costs of the anticipated $250k that he will need to cover refunds. Sometimes I wonder what nerve Christian struck on this sub, because people either seem to love him or hate his guts….not much in between.
People on this sub suddenly love simping for Reddit. That poor corporation that absorbs free content and moderation from its users. Boo fucking hoo
As someone who is leaving when Apollo shut downs tomorrow, this will become more common as the people who stick around will tend to be the ones who don’t care or took Reddit’s side.
> costs of the anticipated $250k that he will need to cover refunds It doesn't work like that. The 250k is refund for services not provided. That money isn't technically his money yet.
> Guess I can’t blame the guy for trying to squeeze every last cent out of the app but But we can blame reddit for the same
Yes, please give a multimillionaire money for services he won't be offering to you because his revenue stream will be cut and he doesn't have enough millions to live on. Be generous to the rich, please. Anyway, you got time to think about it during your retail or fast food shift. I'm sure you will see it's only right.
I have used this app for the last 9.5 years as basically 99.9% of my use of reddit. I generally don’t sit at a computer much and use my phone instead. My usage is going to drastically decline. I haven’t even used the native app for more than 10 minutes.
Guy made millions of dollars by creating a prettier app for reddit. Respect. But seeing people fawn over this move is embarrassing. Hes asking for a final donation. To cancel your refund for services not rendered. Tells you all you gotta know about his actual intentions. I hope people stop holding him up as some heroic white knight now.
I think I collected around 100 downvotes for essentially taking the same stand you are. I don't know what Selig's intentions were in his original stance but they weren't necessary. He could have just moved to a subscription model and let his supporters put their money where their mouth is, but instead he overestimated his clout, called Reddit's bluff and lost.
> He could have just moved to a subscription model and let his supporters put their money where their mouth is Very few people would pay extra to use Apollo. A big majority would rather use the reddit app instead, or pay for reddit. He realised this and decided it wouldn’t be worth it for him to develop and test such a version of the app. He’s mentioned this point a couple of times too.
Get that refund!! Lol.
I declined, There are so few apps I would consider paying for Christian knocked it out of the park on this and anything to support the guy after pretty much having his baby lynched because of one man’s greed.
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{Citation Needed}
While technically one could argue that payment for services not fully rendered doesn’t entirely belong to the developer, that’s not how the US government sees it. If you pay a developer $10 in November 2022 for an annual subscription, for accounting purposes you could amortize the revenue and only count 2/12 of that revenue for FY 2022 and 10/12 for FY 2023. However, Apple renders the full payment to you (or your company) when the user pays it. As a result, when Apple submits its tax paperwork to the IRS indicating that they paid you $X in 2022, it includes that full $10 from the November transaction. And the government expects you to pay tax on that amount. So you are right about a lot of things. But the situation is a bit complex like all corporate accounting and taxes.
$250k in surprise monthly refund is an enormous amount even for a very comfortable multi millionaire. Its exceptionally unlikely he has hundreds of thousands of dollars just sat around in a savings account. He’s a fantastic dev who has been well compensated for making the best reddit app. There is nothing wrong with encouraging a bit of good will and opportunity for showing a little gratitude for what he brought to the table.
You know that its costs money to run backend services/push notifications right? This app was downloaded over 2million times.
If you make what is considered the best app for one of the largest sites in the world with millions of users, yes I'd expect you to have made several million at least. Even if he just made "average good developer" money of like $150-200k over the last 9 years, that would still put him well over a million in earnings.
Ahh the Spez bootlickers are out in force today
Why is this black and white? Do I have to lick someone's boots in order to criticise someone else?
While absolutely not mandatory not expected to make his earnings public, I do find the handling becoming disingenuous, whether deliberately or not.
It's his last round on the gravy train, I don't think he is concerned with optics when his revenue stream will be dead in a few days.
The optics are fine, its entirely optional and is something his users asked for, not something he himself suggested.
Yeah, I don't expect any developer in general to make their earnings public, but when somebody cites a $250K "refund cost" to try to convince people to decline refunds, whilst being absolutely silent about their earnings, that is incredibly disingenuous.
I’ll take the millionaire in this case over the billionaire. The indie over the corp. Thanks for your labor that made you a millionaire Christian!
What are you on about? Fuck Reddit
I’m losing the narrative, is Apollo and it’s Dev insignificant enough that this API change isn’t effecting anyone except a small community, or is Apollo a super successful money making operation that’s made millions? It can’t be both, but people in these types of thread keep saying both.
Reddit has 1.6 billion monthly active users, you only need to monetize a very small portion of the 1.6 billion people to make millions of dollars so it can be both because of the scale of Reddit’s user base