I’ve seen the app Apollo as the center of the reddit protest (it was mentioned and cited more than any other app in relevant posts). I’ve also seen many Lemmy clients in development taking inspiration from it.
As a lifetime Android user I’ve never been able to use it, and I’ve never gotten a proper answer to “why not just use the official app?” What made it different from the official application and other unofficial clients that consequently made it so popular among Redditors?
I’m guessing part of why Apollo took a spotlight was the dev being very open in how he was trying to negotiate with reddit and how spez tried to smear Apollo with lies about blackmail.
I never used Apollo, but it’s pretty clear the dev loves making it, and is very communicative with it’s community. Which is great.
The official app is hot garbage.
The other piece about why Apollo was so amazing is more the recognition. It FELT like an Apple app. It navigated the way every native iPhone app did and back when it was new especially had a fluidity that just didn’t exist. More importantly Apple recognized this so much that they themselves talked about it frequently at events, showed off devices with it, and even most recently at WWDC mentioned it as the only social media app. It was a high praised app because everyone recognized the hard work and keen eye that developed it.