this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Unpopular opinion: I feel like Apollo started getting worse once the Pixel Pals were added.
They were cute, for sure, and I understand why he did it, but I noticed a lot more weird bugs that made the app basically unusable some days, and it ended up driving me to another third party app.
I never enabled them, so I never really noticed. I didn’t feel like the app got noticeably worse. If anything, I got more comfortable with Apollo year after year and the old desktop site I was so familiar with was becoming less appealing over time.
I do understand how, after maintaining the same app as his main gig, he would want to work on something else after almost a decade - especially something with mainstream appeal. There are young folks in my family who got Pixel Pals (the standalone app) after seeing their friends have them. That’s huge.
I hope he does come back eventually to make some Fediverse stuff.
I didn't really enable the Pixel Pals either.
However, I definitely noticed more and more bugs that weren't getting fixed, such as formatting glitches and errors connecting to Reddit, and I was also one of the people who got the Ultra Lifetime sale pop-up every 5 minutes last Christmas. Everybody who didn't get that downvoted me to oblivion and called me all sorts of colorful names because I was apparently a "liar" (as well as everybody else who experienced this). That's what made me quit Apollo.
Every update since Pixel Pals came out just seemed to be more icons and Pixel Pal features and no bug fixes.
I don't think Christian was being malicious or anything, but the inability to report bugs because of the rabid fanbase does no good. I've reported bugs in lots of software and never got treated like this elsewhere, even when it is open-source. A lone developer cannot possibly catch all corner cases.
Wasn’t the source of a lot of it the random undocumented changes Reddit kept making to their api? That’s my recollection of the various video and gifv bugs at least. Those were the only ones that were super annoying to me anyway.
My only disappointment from Christian is waiting for years for the mythical iPad update. :(
Not sure, but the thing that made me quit Apollo was that I was one of the people who got the pop-up about the Ultra lifetime sale every five minutes when scrolling through the feed last Christmas. It made the app completely unusable.
Every time I tried to report any bug, even if it was a trivial one like glitchy formatting, I just got called a ton of colorful names by the community. The fact that this was allowed was my main gripe.
Ah yeah that’s fair I’d be pissed too. Hopefully lemmy doesn’t inherit all that community lash back like the old place. Plenty of places over there will make you regret ever commenting.
I never really cared about all the later features he added to Apollo. I was an early adopter and had pro which was a one time purchase. Never saw the need when he rolled out the ultra stuff but it also didn’t bother me he found ways to monetize it without selling me as a product to marketing companies or whatever heh.
Bummer you had a lousy experience. Hopefully you and I both can feel more comfortable here :)
I really don't think Christian was being malicious, and I also paid for pro. I really do think it was unintentional, and it's a great idea to have a pop-up when the sale begins. I was even OK with the idea of it being once a month or so.
However, the rabid fanbase and the insults don't help anyone. A lone developer can't possibly catch all bugs alone. I was more upset that the shit-talkers weren't being dealt with.
But I do appreciate that he kept us informed about the situation with Reddit, and I never would have wished anyone to be treated the way spez treated him. I also joined forces with the Apollo fanboys from ReddPlanet in the end... too bad it wasn't enough. But so far I'm really enjoying Lemmy, wefwef, and Memmy!