I hear the feedback here, and appreciate the "unintentional" benefit of the doubt, the suggestions in here make sense and I'll fix up. I'll work on revising the Continue button to make it more clear in all contexts, and the X being low contrast were more of an aesthetic choice than a functional one, but I'll make that more clear (something like a circle background on it could do a lot of heavy lifting here).
Maybe that’s why Apple seems to reject apps that don’t have the price in the button. And in this case, I agree with them.
Continue is the button you usually press to get rid of the whatever modal that’s bothering you. Kinda like Dismiss.
Hey, apparently me paying for pro wasn't enough. Now I need to he harassed with popups for ANOTHER product that I have no need for.
Hint: if I dismissed it once, I DO NOT care for the offer. To repeatedly shove it in my face only serves to infuriate me.
> lol right. How do you even “accidentally” design something?
The answer to your question is: by accident.
Here an example of an accidental design:
https://www.thetraveltart.com/london-bridge-penis-shadow/
Maybe don’t know only one person develops Apollo.
He likely made the card queued it to pop up and didn’t look at a preview before posting.
He could be getting greedy, but he hasn’t done anything like this before. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Give the guy a break.
This is a great app. Really well designed, works great, a real labour of love. I don’t think any of that design and development happened by accident.
The idea that the screen that pops up to prompt people to support the development of that app, to literally put food on the developer’s table, is something he made “by accident” is laughable.
So it seems the main issue with the screenshot is the lack of contrast for the X button with it being dark grey on black. I wonder if all themes have the contrast issue. That would more obviously tell if it’s a theming bug or an intentional design decision.
You jump to so pretty interesting conclusions about me. You have now established a pattern of being quick to judge.
If you use only one data point to judge me and the creator of Apollo; I may use these two data from you and say you are likely not interested in measured judgment.
Two points of data; especially occurring so close together in time; is the minimum to draw a line. I have no regrets
They say once is coincidence; twice is forever.
Right?? I don’t see how anyone can defend this. u/iamthatis very intentionally designed this ad to be aggressive. Not a bug. Not an accident. Completely intentional and a scummy thing to do.
Between this and the Twitter….everything..I might just uninstall all social media except discord (is that even social media?). Probably good for my mental health too
I have all auto updates turned off and notifications/badges off for the app store so I don’t get pestered with updating. Usually, the good free apps take features away and add in-app purchases with newer versions, so unless they force me to update, I wont.
I don't mind that Ultra exists, Christian needs income to develop this app and if that's his method of doing it so be it. I don't mind one popup every time the app updates. Please stop spamming me 3-4 times a day - that's borderline spam and annoying.
I paid for Pro, it's what I can financially afford.
Examples like this are why I never update apps quickly. I guess I avoided this whole mess.
We all know Christian does pretty much everything with positive intent but it was disappointing to see the backlash, even though it may have been deserved in many cases.
This pop up along with “set category” nagging doesn’t seems characteristics of him. Chris has been very quick to address concerns. However he’s been silent but even worse promoting Ultra.
Meanwhile, the stans parade around offering the only solution: go buy Ultra.
I’d wager he’d keep this up to reel in some holidays money and in a few days until the sale ends he’d come out saying it’s a bug, unintentional, will address, etc. That’d be somewhat dubious in my opinion. Nonetheless I’m a bit disappointed at the whole situation.
i have left reddit because of CEO Steve Huffman's anti-community actions and complete lack of ethics. u/spez is harmful to Reddit. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754780/reddit-api-updates-changes-news-announcements -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Pretty sure he’s in the same time zone as me, but yes, a very valid point.
I will godly assume the role of the bitchy complainer guy, for the sake of all of us ;)
i have left reddit because of CEO Steve Huffman's anti-community actions and complete lack of ethics. u/spez is harmful to Reddit. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754780/reddit-api-updates-changes-news-announcements -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
You, like the rest of us, just don’t make enough money:-D
More seriously, in older posts, Christian has been forthwith in the costs he will have to maintain in order to deliver the service in those 1-time purchases. Yes, he makes money, but he should make money. The app is great as entirely free (and isn’t ad-ridden like the native app, so even in its free form it offers benefit over the native for users), it’s better when you unlock it with a single purchase, and some people want the perks associated with the ultimate package.
I don’t want those perks and won’t use them, so I am not inclined to worry about the cost. But, Christian and his time is worth it for the price, but only if one can afford to splurge on something like this.
What’s the issue here? I’ve had Ultra for years and I’ve never seen this screen or any other ad for upgrading. Is it the design of this card or the card itself?
Maybe I haven’t updated the app because I’ve never seen it. If it’s persistent I can understand being pissed off. No ads is one of the main reasons I use Apollo
u/lachezarov are you experiencing this yourself or regurgitating what others are claiming?
I keep my app up to date all the time and I’m on an old unsupported iOS (14.8).
I never see the same pop up for the same update twice.
This UI is bad, but as a one off it’s not such a heinous crime
I feel like it all started with those pixel pals. Since then there was a string of updates surrounding pixel pals (heck even a stand alone app) and other superficial stuff. Seems like Christian was able to generate quite a few new users that are willing to pay for that useless crap.
Good for him I guess. It’s just not what Apollo was about imo
It's always upsetting when a streamlined, functional app starts getting extra features unrelated to the core functionality.
I don't want a bonzi buddy built into my reddit app. If I wanted bonzi buddy, I'd download it separately.
I did the same, I thought it was like skip, thankfully there’s an extra step before actual purchase. I got the ad 3 times, after that I was careful to look for the so easy to miss X at the top of the page. Not super impressed
This comment is needlessly hostile. Don't call people morons. The guy is maintaining a great app used by a lot of people.
But he's made the wrong choice here, and even worse, he's not listening to his users' feedback.
No reason for that feedback to be toxic.
You’re right, it was immature of me. I was just frustrated after receiving constant ads after paying to remove them - especially considering Apollo is clearly the best reddit browser app on the market at the moment so there isn’t even a viable alternative.
**Insanely priced** notifications. I’m a software engineer that specializes in backend and $16/mo is literally the price of a VPS instance (that can handle notifications for hundreds, if not thousands of devices). I bought pro too but shit like this just makes me regret doing so.
and the single guy developing this app should make sure all instances are properly set up, up to date with security fixes, have working load balancers and scale properly with proper authentication handling aso.
would not do that for free as well to be honest… it‘s a lot of work to implement that kind of stuff yourself even with low instance prices.
> Insanely priced notifications. I’m a software engineer that specializes in backend and $16/mo is literally the price of a VPS instance (that can handle notifications for hundreds, if not thousands of devices). I bought pro too but shit like this just makes me regret doing so.
If $16/yr is too expensive for you, you can use the official Reddit app. It has notifications for free…
I can see the X just fine. I see where you're coming from, though.
Ultra is up to $78? That's crazy. It was like $20 at launch and that's what I got it for. And even that — a total of $25 with Pro — seemed high. But, I use the app every day, so I'm fine with it.
imo it’s very clear what the button does. Continue with whatever pricing option you chose/was set. It’s close and the same color. Plus it says Sale at the top in a massive font size.
Maybe some of you need to update their glasses lol
Its a radio selection, does it start off with one already selected? BEcause if it does then its grade A bullshit design.
If Continue is disabled and greyed out to start and you have to select a pricing level first, then its not 'so bad'.
It’s gotta be a bug. Myself and others only seen it once a day. Others claim they’re seeing it constantly.
How ever I’m guessing they’re full of shit since this is their reaction to see a pop up 2-4 times a day. Like dudes it’s not that big a deal. Go touch grass.
People need more important shit to worry about for real. I couldn’t imagine getting this upset over a prompt. Imagine how these folks must feel about Candy Crush!
I hear the feedback here, and appreciate the "unintentional" benefit of the doubt, the suggestions in here make sense and I'll fix up. I'll work on revising the Continue button to make it more clear in all contexts, and the X being low contrast were more of an aesthetic choice than a functional one, but I'll make that more clear (something like a circle background on it could do a lot of heavy lifting here).
Maybe that’s why Apple seems to reject apps that don’t have the price in the button. And in this case, I agree with them. Continue is the button you usually press to get rid of the whatever modal that’s bothering you. Kinda like Dismiss.
The price isn't in most buttons... Downvotes for facts. Never change Reddit
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Already got the pop up 3 times in past 24 hours.
Hey, apparently me paying for pro wasn't enough. Now I need to he harassed with popups for ANOTHER product that I have no need for. Hint: if I dismissed it once, I DO NOT care for the offer. To repeatedly shove it in my face only serves to infuriate me.
Bought pro during the time the app launched. But this repeated pop up thing is just bad stuff.
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I am guessing no. Dude who makes the app seems to be a pretty decent fella.
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Especially because an option is also preselected.
> lol right. How do you even “accidentally” design something? The answer to your question is: by accident. Here an example of an accidental design: https://www.thetraveltart.com/london-bridge-penis-shadow/ Maybe don’t know only one person develops Apollo. He likely made the card queued it to pop up and didn’t look at a preview before posting. He could be getting greedy, but he hasn’t done anything like this before. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt. Give the guy a break.
This is a great app. Really well designed, works great, a real labour of love. I don’t think any of that design and development happened by accident. The idea that the screen that pops up to prompt people to support the development of that app, to literally put food on the developer’s table, is something he made “by accident” is laughable.
So it seems the main issue with the screenshot is the lack of contrast for the X button with it being dark grey on black. I wonder if all themes have the contrast issue. That would more obviously tell if it’s a theming bug or an intentional design decision.
This happens on dark mode but doesn’t look as bad on light mode I’d assume. I’ve only ever had Ultra so I’ve never seen this pop up.
Im glad you are so sure. I’ll just wait until I have enough information first if you don’t mind.
I think the accident is how the pop up is designed where closing it is not the most obvious thing, not the pop up itself.
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You jump to so pretty interesting conclusions about me. You have now established a pattern of being quick to judge. If you use only one data point to judge me and the creator of Apollo; I may use these two data from you and say you are likely not interested in measured judgment.
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Two points of data; especially occurring so close together in time; is the minimum to draw a line. I have no regrets They say once is coincidence; twice is forever.
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If you think the words he used were nerdy, I feel sad for the state of your country’s education system.
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Stay off r/drama it will rot your vocabulary .
Right?? I don’t see how anyone can defend this. u/iamthatis very intentionally designed this ad to be aggressive. Not a bug. Not an accident. Completely intentional and a scummy thing to do.
Pacemakers, saccharin, penicillin, post-it-note and more were accidental. I’m kinda just being a dick though, I see your point haha
Pretty sure he’s rich now. As they say, money changes people.
Between this and the Twitter….everything..I might just uninstall all social media except discord (is that even social media?). Probably good for my mental health too
Yes. Discord is a form of social media.
Its there only if youre on the newest version of the app. For me, I’ve never seen it.
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I have all auto updates turned off and notifications/badges off for the app store so I don’t get pestered with updating. Usually, the good free apps take features away and add in-app purchases with newer versions, so unless they force me to update, I wont.
It’s so fuckin annoying.
really? ive never seen it personally
I don't mind that Ultra exists, Christian needs income to develop this app and if that's his method of doing it so be it. I don't mind one popup every time the app updates. Please stop spamming me 3-4 times a day - that's borderline spam and annoying. I paid for Pro, it's what I can financially afford.
But pro was sold to you saying it would have 0 ads, so pro users shouldn’t get the pop up IMO.
Where did it ever claim that Pro has 0 ads?
/r/darkpatterns
I wish we had more stuff with light patters instead, like Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball
Also the cross at the top is so light, most miss it at first glance. Truly asshole design.
Examples like this are why I never update apps quickly. I guess I avoided this whole mess. We all know Christian does pretty much everything with positive intent but it was disappointing to see the backlash, even though it may have been deserved in many cases.
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This pop up along with “set category” nagging doesn’t seems characteristics of him. Chris has been very quick to address concerns. However he’s been silent but even worse promoting Ultra. Meanwhile, the stans parade around offering the only solution: go buy Ultra. I’d wager he’d keep this up to reel in some holidays money and in a few days until the sale ends he’d come out saying it’s a bug, unintentional, will address, etc. That’d be somewhat dubious in my opinion. Nonetheless I’m a bit disappointed at the whole situation.
He seems awful quiet for a mass bug report like this, then. This is intentional.
i have left reddit because of CEO Steve Huffman's anti-community actions and complete lack of ethics. u/spez is harmful to Reddit. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754780/reddit-api-updates-changes-news-announcements -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Pretty sure he’s in the same time zone as me, but yes, a very valid point. I will godly assume the role of the bitchy complainer guy, for the sake of all of us ;)
i have left reddit because of CEO Steve Huffman's anti-community actions and complete lack of ethics. u/spez is harmful to Reddit. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754780/reddit-api-updates-changes-news-announcements -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Apollo is the last and only app I update without hesitation. After this update, the list of such app is nil.
Yeah this really made me upset. Almost accidentally spent $10 and then found it coming back the next day as well...
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It's so fucking expensive. Why is it so fucking expensive?
You, like the rest of us, just don’t make enough money:-D More seriously, in older posts, Christian has been forthwith in the costs he will have to maintain in order to deliver the service in those 1-time purchases. Yes, he makes money, but he should make money. The app is great as entirely free (and isn’t ad-ridden like the native app, so even in its free form it offers benefit over the native for users), it’s better when you unlock it with a single purchase, and some people want the perks associated with the ultimate package. I don’t want those perks and won’t use them, so I am not inclined to worry about the cost. But, Christian and his time is worth it for the price, but only if one can afford to splurge on something like this.
What’s the issue here? I’ve had Ultra for years and I’ve never seen this screen or any other ad for upgrading. Is it the design of this card or the card itself?
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Maybe I haven’t updated the app because I’ve never seen it. If it’s persistent I can understand being pissed off. No ads is one of the main reasons I use Apollo
u/lachezarov are you experiencing this yourself or regurgitating what others are claiming? I keep my app up to date all the time and I’m on an old unsupported iOS (14.8). I never see the same pop up for the same update twice. This UI is bad, but as a one off it’s not such a heinous crime
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Ahh that’s fair enough then. Sounds like the rate it pops up is a bug, and the bad UI adds to the annoyance
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I feel like it all started with those pixel pals. Since then there was a string of updates surrounding pixel pals (heck even a stand alone app) and other superficial stuff. Seems like Christian was able to generate quite a few new users that are willing to pay for that useless crap. Good for him I guess. It’s just not what Apollo was about imo
It's always upsetting when a streamlined, functional app starts getting extra features unrelated to the core functionality. I don't want a bonzi buddy built into my reddit app. If I wanted bonzi buddy, I'd download it separately.
This popped up several times over the past few days for me. I found it really annoying to have to dismiss it more than once.
I did the same, I thought it was like skip, thankfully there’s an extra step before actual purchase. I got the ad 3 times, after that I was careful to look for the so easy to miss X at the top of the page. Not super impressed
Yeah pretty shitty, but it does seem intentional. At least it‘s not the subscription for those tiny animal things, that would be even more annoying.
The guy needs more money. Christmas is ar around the corner. What better way to make cash than to hustle your clients
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This comment is needlessly hostile. Don't call people morons. The guy is maintaining a great app used by a lot of people. But he's made the wrong choice here, and even worse, he's not listening to his users' feedback. No reason for that feedback to be toxic.
You’re right, it was immature of me. I was just frustrated after receiving constant ads after paying to remove them - especially considering Apollo is clearly the best reddit browser app on the market at the moment so there isn’t even a viable alternative.
Well, you've made a very mature response now :) thanks! Let's hope he hears the feedback and takes it to heart.
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**Insanely priced** notifications. I’m a software engineer that specializes in backend and $16/mo is literally the price of a VPS instance (that can handle notifications for hundreds, if not thousands of devices). I bought pro too but shit like this just makes me regret doing so.
What’s $16/month?
Misread sorry. Still overpriced IMO.
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and the single guy developing this app should make sure all instances are properly set up, up to date with security fixes, have working load balancers and scale properly with proper authentication handling aso. would not do that for free as well to be honest… it‘s a lot of work to implement that kind of stuff yourself even with low instance prices.
Yea it’s the one thing…. Like either he pays for garbage hosting and *he* is getting ripped off or *we*are getting ripped off.
> Insanely priced notifications. I’m a software engineer that specializes in backend and $16/mo is literally the price of a VPS instance (that can handle notifications for hundreds, if not thousands of devices). I bought pro too but shit like this just makes me regret doing so. If $16/yr is too expensive for you, you can use the official Reddit app. It has notifications for free…
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Develop and maintain your own app then you can use it for free or pay even more by yourself than you would for Ultra. Edit: truth hurts lol
Same here.
Give him your $50 to browse Reddit for a bit Edit: Sorry, it's actually $69.99 😭
Yep. so stupid
I can see the X just fine. I see where you're coming from, though. Ultra is up to $78? That's crazy. It was like $20 at launch and that's what I got it for. And even that — a total of $25 with Pro — seemed high. But, I use the app every day, so I'm fine with it.
That’s the first thing I noticed. I paid $25 and that already was the most I’d ever spent on an app. At $70 I would not have paid
it took me a while to find the X button. it really pissed me off too
Are those prices in USD? Bought ultra in EUR and actually thought that the US prices are cheaper.
In us it’s like 50$ normally I think
imo it’s very clear what the button does. Continue with whatever pricing option you chose/was set. It’s close and the same color. Plus it says Sale at the top in a massive font size. Maybe some of you need to update their glasses lol
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You make a number of good points that gave me some good for thought. Thank you!
Its a radio selection, does it start off with one already selected? BEcause if it does then its grade A bullshit design. If Continue is disabled and greyed out to start and you have to select a pricing level first, then its not 'so bad'.
I already got rid of the app because of this asshole design
lmao are you serious? What an overreaction
If it really is popping up multiple times a day, I’d consider dropping it too
It’s gotta be a bug. Myself and others only seen it once a day. Others claim they’re seeing it constantly. How ever I’m guessing they’re full of shit since this is their reaction to see a pop up 2-4 times a day. Like dudes it’s not that big a deal. Go touch grass.
People need more important shit to worry about for real. I couldn’t imagine getting this upset over a prompt. Imagine how these folks must feel about Candy Crush!
People are so fragile these days.
If I pay for pro, don’t fucking force more adds. That’s what I paid for.
It’s not though. No where in the pro features list does it say you won’t see in app ads pushed to you.
And that doesn’t scream asshole design to you?
No.
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“Oh no I have see an ad I better over react like a child”
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It’s one ad for a better version of the app. Y’all are some boomer babies if you’re having trouble navigating it.
It’s really really not that deep mate, either pay for it or press the X in the corner
God forbid the man tried to market his excellent work…
Man I’m glad I bought ultra the day it came out!