The official app is hot garbage

On a whim I decided to give the official app a try because a lot of people will be forced to use it, if they decide to stay on Reddit.

Holy hell, it's just slow. Can't scroll through a subreddit without annoying hitches and stutters. Comments aren't any better also.

On the other hand, Sync is just fucking gorgeous and runs immensely better than the encumbered official app.

How can apps made by small teams or even a single person be better optimized than one supposedly made by a larger team with a larger development budget?

OsrsNeedsF2P,

Give it a one star on the way out!

radioactiveradio,

They'll just pay Google to up it again.

Pyr_Pressure,

At least it will cost reddit money

metaStatic,

make them pay

D-ISS-O-CIA-TED,

Thanks for the reminder

Cosmonaut_Collin,
@Cosmonaut_Collin@lemmy.world avatar

Reddit app has to cram in those ads, and they don't want you to scroll too fast past those gorgeous ads.

Or reddit is refusing to pay their developers well, while small app projects are made out of passion.

TWeaK,

Not just ads, but trackers and whatever else they can use to wrangle data from your phone.

Hyperreality,

Yep. It's like adobe acrobat reader.

You can use the official app. Slow and bloated.

You can use something like sumatra or foxit, they're faster and takes up almost no diskspace.

IRC acrobat has trackers and telemetry included, allowing it to send data to adobe about where your mouse hovered, etc. etc.

Same for reddit. Reddit.com doesn't consider users customers. We're product. There to be mined for (personal) data.

TWeaK,

Apparently some organisations block Sumatra now, which is screwy as hell.

ten4,
@ten4@kbin.social avatar

Edge can edit PDFs now to fill and sign forms and such, fuck installing anything anymore.

TWeaK,

Sumatra is so lightweight though, you literally don't have to wait. IMO it's the best viewer.

RheingoldRiver,

What??? Why??

1bluepixel,
@1bluepixel@kbin.social avatar

Ads... Ads everywhere...

It's reaching Facebook levels. I just can't.

zedtronic,

The API pricing is shit, but I care more about how I’m forced into an app with ads. That’s really the straw that made me seek alternatives in earnest.

Thalyssa,
@Thalyssa@kbin.social avatar

The app also heats up my phone like games do.

RiF and Sync do not. Because they are made by people who care about user experience.

meldroc,

Takes a lot of power to do that data collection...

waterbogan,

I've used it a little bit on my phone in the past. Its pretty bad, especially for a major company product

blivet,
@blivet@kbin.social avatar

It’s genuinely infuriating that with 2000 employees Reddit couldn’t be bothered to put together a halfway decent app. Apollo was created by a single developer.

skulblaka,
@skulblaka@kbin.social avatar

Thing is, they don't have to do that. They can just wall the garden instead, and then anyone that wants to use Reddit will be forced to either use their garbage or just stay off reddit.

It doesn't seem to be working out so well for them, but that was in fact one of several potential solutions to this problem. Why do any work, when you can just bully the alternatives into submission?

hellequin67,

What makes it worse is they killed off a perfectly good TPA (alien blue) for the dev to help create their app. Which is one of the worst apps I've seen, using Reddit as a web wrap is better than the app.

Wxfisch,
@Wxfisch@lemmy.world avatar

What’s even worse is Reddit bought a third party app (Alien Blue) to use as the base for their first party app. They couldn’t even be bothered to create something original and instead just ruined the most popular app out there.

It actually wasn’t terrible right after their acquisition, it really got bad once they made the video player changes to make it more like TikTok/Instagram/Facebook in an effort to grow “engagement” so they could sell more ads. I stopped using it at about that time and moved to Apollo and never looked back. Trying it again a month or two ago (to access my chat messages since that isn’t an endpoint exposed in the API) and it was just so much worse. With Pi-hole it’s maybe usable but it isn’t fun or pleasant compared to Apollo.

I figure most people don’t know that there are apps that have minor but key usability enhancements and so don’t really care. Those same people though are fine with the ads and taking on Facebook and Instagram and so are pretty much a lost cause anyways.

corytheboyd,
@corytheboyd@kbin.social avatar

A single competent, seasoned app developer can not only replace hundreds of engineers, but vastly outperform them. But. Only when the vision is clear. Apollo, Sync, etc.? Extremely clear vision, it is a Reddit client, everyone knows what a good Reddit client should be, so a competent developer can make it happen, it’s just a function of time and money.

Businesses work differently, especially VC backed businesses. The actual app to such a business doesn’t matter, what matters is:

  1. Is it making us money?
  2. Next year, will it make us twice as much money?
  3. In two years, will it make us five times as much money?
  4. Ad infinitum (pun intended)

The shit that ruins the official app is shit attempts at the above. Because again, the app does not matter.

archomrade,

Their web app is trash too, old.reddit was the only way to use it on browser IMHO

Crayon8027,
@Crayon8027@kbin.social avatar

The worst part of the redesign is how slow it feels. I also noticed how cluttered everything looks on the redesign. The buttons below the titles are unnecessarily big. The multicolored flairs are very distracting. Some flairs are basically an entire sentence long, others have emojis. It makes reading the post titles extremely difficult.

danc4498,

Reddit stuffed their app to the brim with tracking. This tracking is probably what slows the app down and also is the only reason they're killing 3rd party apps.

Ni, (edited )
@Ni@kbin.social avatar

So I found the official app awful and insanely slow, I always assumed it was my phones fault though. Literally gave up on things loading several times.

Happy to be on kbin instead!

Lippy, (edited )
@Lippy@kbin.social avatar

Sync is so good, it's what I use(d) Reddit with. Good news is that Sync isn't dead, it's being reborn with support for Lemmy.

https://teddit.net/r/SyncforLemmy/comments/14ee1ul

Edit: Redirect link to old Reddit for sanity.
Edit2: Redirect link again to avoid Reddit altogether thanks to aidenxy's better solution.

aidenxy,

https://teddit.net/r/SyncforLemmy/comments/14ee1ul
ftfy

aidenxy,

https://teddit.net/r/SyncforLemmy/comments/14ee1ul
ftfy

inventa,

!syncforlemmy

May,
@May@kbin.social avatar

Don't download it just to try! It has trackers be careful. Is better not to ever download it really.

TheEntity,

The people that stay never knew they could have something better. It's like people that don't mind the ads, on Reddit or otherwise. If they never got exposed to the pre-ads Internet or to a good ad blocker, they don't even know they could complain about this experience.

genoxidedev1,
@genoxidedev1@kbin.social avatar

It's crazy to me that people still don't know of adblockers in 2023 but there's an absolute shit-ton of those people.

Hyperreality,

Remember that a lot of people are on mobile. Android's standard browser doesn't allow you to install adblockers anymore, last I checked. Doubt safari does either.

Haunting_Tale_5150,
@Haunting_Tale_5150@kbin.social avatar

Safari allows you to install adblockers, there's multiple options too. Most vpns these days also come with adblock even if your browser doesn't allow it.

KuroJ,

Agreed. Tried it in place of Apollo and I can’t stand it. Some Lemmy apps are already better than the official Reddit app.

alpsacka,

I just took a look at the app page on the iOS app store and... the average review is 4.8/5? How is that possible? It's awful!

Hyperreality,

A lot of content on reddit is posted by bots. Votes are often bots generated. Comments are increasingly bot generated. Especially in the larger subs, and when it comes to (international) politics.

When reddit was new, reddit they used bots and fake accounts to make it seem less empty. Huffman has admitted this publicly and in interviews.

With this whole API debacle, I've seen numerous identical comments about not using third party apps, so reddit.com is almost certainly using bots to swing the narrative on the API too.

Have a guess why the average review of the app is high? Even ignoring the people who aren't rating the app but reddit itself, it's almost certain that that rating is rigged.

waysuperyuck,

@alpsacka

@Thalyssa

Because when they write a review, normies are reviewing Reddit, not the app. They don’t even know third party apps exist.

nepenthes,

Spez editing? lol

OtakuAltair,
@OtakuAltair@lemmy.world avatar

Sync is amazing

magnetosphere,
@magnetosphere@kbin.social avatar

I tried it over a year after its initial release, thinking they’d have time to sort out the biggest problems. I thought other redditors were possibly exaggerating, or recalling their experiences with an earlier version. It couldn’t be that bad, right?

Yeah, it could. Wow. They’re trying to encourage people to use an app that’s utter shit. It’s an… interesting strategy.

Criton,
@Criton@feddit.uk avatar

I use Relay Pro for Reddit (which is fantastic) but obviously that won't be viable in a week. I go on maybe once a day for 5 minutes just to see the state of the protests but I get annoyed about how many subs just appear to be 'back to normal'. Of course, after next week I expect that to change.

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