I’m desktop-only user and never had any experience with Reddit/Lemmy apps, and the sentiment towards them confuzes me.
I can imagine that the third-party apps for Reddit were better (?not bugged?) than the official one. But what made you to love them? Was the experience even better than desktop use?
Feel free to write about both Reddit and Lemmy apps in your responses.
I would say a good mobile client’s user experience is indeed better than desktop. Desktop websites are second class citizens in this day and age.
As a mainly desktop user I agree. Nearly everything is designed/built around portrait mode nowadays, and landscape is merely a secondary concern… if at all. Understandable considering a lot of traffic is from mobile, but it can make things feel a bit clunky and fit poorly on a wide screen.
It’s more about the principal to me. Reddit was set apart from other social media because they allowed you to customise the experience so much. They weren’t forcing you towards a “for you page” or “suggested content”, there are no “stories” or “shorts”. My reddit app has looked the same since 2011 and worked the same since. Reddit slowly stopped introducing new features to the api which sucked but it still worked. Killing off 3rd party apps is, for me, the begging of reddit becoming just another social media site that frustrates me.
I think ultimately it depends on what your use case is. Comparing Apollo to any web version of Reddit, there were already a few use cases which were definitely superior in my view:
- the video / gif player with supports scrubbing by touch.
- packaging comment chains into screenshots to share, with automated features like blurring usernames, selecting depth of parent / child comments to include, merging with post content
- being able to “favourite” a sub without actually subscribing
- hiding posts that you’ve already seen
Ultimately, as with any tool, the best tool is the one you have on you.
The first and last points are hitting me so hard right now, even just one day after Apollo’s demise. Being able to scrub through a video or GIF was so incredibly useful. You could pause it by holding your finger still, then move back and forth by swiping left or right, even frame by frame if you wanted. I miss that more than I thought I would.
Also, hiding posts I’ve already seen (or scrolled past) was another lifesaver. One thing I notice on Lemmy (I’m simultaneously testing Mlem, Memmy and wefwef) is that I keep seeing the same posts over and over. Every few hours I open an app to my home page, and scroll through the same few dozen posts that are popular that day, only seeing something new between every five or six familiar posts. Apollo never showed me the same post twice unless I specifically bookmarked it. Much less wasted time.
i don’t have a solution yet for the media playback. Mainly because I don’t seem to have stumbled upon many gifs / videos on Lemmy yet.
However for the stale posts issue, I’ve found sorting by new or new comments seem to be the best way to get fresh posts. I’ve also put in a feature request for the hide read posts feature to the Wefwef dev. Hopefully they get a chance soon to consider it!
Third party apps let you get the benefit of choosing exactly what works best for you and getting a setup you enjoy. Most of the focus by instance admins would be on ensuring everything doesn’t implode and managing fees, but third party apps have a pure focus on usability and dedicate all their resources to making the best experience possible and then the end result is usually way nicer.
This message is being written on a third party app, funny enough! Memmy to be specific.
