I almost forgot Apollo… 🥹
Voyager is such a great replacement ☺️ but yea, was a very sad end for Apollo.
what happened to apollo?
Reddit killed third party apps like seven months ago.
oh i tought it updated for lemmy too, bummer
It’s not over, I’m still using Apollo sideloaded. It’s actually fantastic because no ads and tracking.
How does it work with the closed API?
It’s on GitHub and gets development still actually. You download the IPA file and Apple treats it as a developer app so it’s no problem.
You also have to get a Reddit and Imgur key and signup for a developer account on Reddit. Reddit allows developer accounts many more pull requests than user accounts so it’s able to run a 3rd party app.
Very nice to hear!
I’m currently reading your comment on Voyager, which is the Lemmy version of Apollo lol.
Idk, the lackluster support for gifs has kinda killed it for me. I’m finding Avelon to be a much closer replacement
Sent this from Voyager.
Ok I’ll give you that - being able to inline gifs is sick
What do you want to do with GIFs? Scrub them?
Honestly, it’s a couple things. First of all is just general compatibility. There are certain domains that don’t play at all (redgifs, for example). They just show up as links to click. Then, there are ones that are a little more transient, but still negatively affect the UX. An example is if you browse !videos@lemmy.world right now. The first post there (https://aussie.zone/post/6569161) won’t load for me in the feed, and will only load if I click into the post. Once it’s loaded, I can go back out and it’ll play in the feed - but no matter how many times I try or how long I wait, it won’t play in the original feed. Additionally, the play/pause, sound controls, and scrubbing controls are only available if I click into the post. They work, but it’s less convenient.
Here are examples of my experience in both apps:
Avelon (and I forgot to show you can scrub the gif directly in the feed)
Ahh I see, video support is definitely something I want to improve on Voyager! Thanks for the write-up!
Thanks for taking the feedback and continuing to work on this. Honestly, I thought you had given up on the app when you went on that fishing trip that just seemed to keep continuing 😆. Not knocking you - everyone deserves time to themselves. But glad to see this app is still something you’re working on!
Also curious what’s wrong with gifs on Voyager.
That’s pretty quick.
It wasn’t publicly spoken about much from what I understand, but headsets were sent to some select developers within a month or so of the announcement. A buddy of mine was working at a company that is basically totally AR/MR focused and they had around 3 units for development purposes. Disney had to have had them even sooner because they were demoing Disney stuff right at the announcement.
I wouldn’t be totally surprised if the Apollo guy was one of them. He’s an ex Apple employee and Apollo got called out or at least shown in Apple keynotes multiple times before it shut down.
Under the “Can I give feedback?” section, he mentions that he only used the simulator in Xcode for developing this. So sadly he wasn’t one of the few people with a development unit. That makes how quickly he’s done this even more impressive!
Also it’s a css JavaScript skin over the actual YouTube website with some video player integration.
It’s not like the whole interface is from the ground up.
I follow Christian on mastodon. He didn’t have one when he made the app, he was using the emulator.
He is currently on a Canada -> USA road trip to get a vision pro
I follow Christian via iMessage, he’s home and got a lot of great feedback on the trip home to continue developing Juno (while working on his other projects).
From the article (right under “Can I give feedback”):
I’ve only been able to develop this in the simulator, which obviously has its limitations, so once I get my hands on a device this Friday I’ll probably have a lot of thoughts on things I want to improve as well.
Ah good catch
Please help me understand the point of the Vision Pro? It’s not VR. And every app and screenshot I’m seeing looks like “let’s throw this window, that you could normally have on your desktop or TV in your field of view”. Are there any mechanisms to have it interact with your surrounding in an AR type manner? Or does it just overlay flat windows on top of what you’re seeing?
Afaik there are only a handful of actual AR stuff right now:
- Application windows stay anchored to your environment until you reset them. If you put them on top of your desk, it’ll stay there even if you move to your kitchen.
- When you look at your mac, it’ll sometimes pop a button to allow you to initiate virtual display to your mac.
- When you look down to your bluetooth keyboard, it’ll show whatever you type in a floating box complete with suggestions.
Maybe there are more I’m not aware of.
There we go! That’s some stuff that I was missing. Thank you!
Here’s a guided tour of it if you want to learn more
I want it for the virtual monitor aspect. Especially since I have adhd, I think this would possibly cut down on distractions.
Even that seems kinda half ass in this version. Like you think you’d be able to drag a window from your monitor outside the monitor. Instead, it just… Shows your monitor again.
I am not the target market for this device though. I’m not really sure who is, beyond the diehard apple people.
I do find it funny how quickly apple pr moves from the “when they do something they do it right” to “well this is first gen so we expect it has some flaws”.
Oh you’re right. I don’t like that you can only have one virtual monitor. I mean it it 4k as large as you want but come on.
IMHO they don’t “do it right” the first time. They wait until the market is ripe enough, and then fill a hole that no one else has done, or at least correctly. And I don’t even think they’ve done that here, at least yet. But the hardware is very solid, the software needs help.
It’s AR and VR in whatever mix you want it to be. The little spinny dial at the top controls how much of the real world you see vs how much of a virtual environment you see. The bottom end is full AR, the top end is full VR.
Preparation for the future. If you want an actual VR device get an oculus
That’s it, I don’t. I want AR, but just throwing up a random flat window in my field of view without interacting with the environment is not AR. It’s just your monitor with a dynamic background.
It’s going to take time for meaningful AR apps to exist, because this is the first device even capable of testing it in a functional manner on.
But ARKit is already out there and extremely capable on iPhone. The Vision Pro will be able to do way more than the phone due to the field of view and freeing your hands.
This isn’t even technically AR. It’s all VR.
Mixed Reality is what this is called
“Spatial Computing” is what this is called. insert SpongeBob meme
Sure it is.
Applications are obviously limited without developers having one, but the tooling is all there to interact with and modify your perception of objects in the real world. ARKit is already reasonably well tested with mobile. It’s just more/better input and output.
The fact that the real world is passed as a low latency display doesn’t make it not AR.
Does it block ads? It doesn’t, I don’t think Google would like that, but if you have YouTube Premium you won’t see ads, just like the website. Honestly, YouTube Premium is like one of the most essential subscriptions for me, it’s so handy to never worry about ads and it’s pretty cool in that it also supports the creators substantially more than if you watched ads. So I dunno, if you can afford an expensive Apple Vision Pro, I’d really consider treating yourself to YouTube Premium!
O no,… they took him.
Oh grow up.
YouTube sucks balls, but people still want it and the dev, who made Apollo and is one of the best app makers out there, did what they could to make YT available quickly.
So now you’re shitting on him personally because he didn’t fulfill your crusade. Get a life or learn to program and get off your ass and do it yourself.
Jesus, people.
You need to simmer down.
Your point is correct, but it’s fair to comment on the fact a previously vocal free software/no subscription dev is following a different model with this project. He was quite vocal about the reddit API changes, and many folks heard of him during that situation.
That’s not anywhere close to anything he said.
He was perfectly happy to pay reasonable pricing for API access or to pass through ads if Reddit included them as part of the API.
His issue was that Reddit’s pricing was obscenely more than they generate per user, functionally made it impossible for developers to pass the costs on to the users even if they wanted to, dropped it on him with minimal warning after very recent statements that they had every intention of leaving API access alone, and then repeatedly fucking publicly lied about him when he had the audacity to tell his paying customers what was going on in the very near future.
That’s exactly the vocality I’m referring to.
Except your characterization of it is a lie.
He never said anything that could possibly be interpreted as being against paying for access to content, or as a subscription to an ongoing service being in any way inappropriate.
It’s not a lie.
I’m asserting two things:
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He formerly produced a free app that was very popular.
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He openly discussed the the API pricing changes destroyed the model Apollo was operating on.
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He did plenty of monetization on the app, and made good money with it with volume that doesn’t exist on Vision Pro. He never said anything implying apps don’t deserve to be paid for.
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In literally every discussion he ever had about the API pricing change, he said that he entirely supported their need to monetize the API. His issues were not any sort of issue with the premise of the API changes. It was the specific nature of the API changes very obviously being for the sole purpose of making using the API to make an app impossible, when the app ecosystem was the entire reason Reddit was successful to begin with.
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He was not against paying for the API. The prices Reddit asked for were just insane and he could not have continued Apollo with an optional subscription. Youtube Premium is also optional. The fact that Apollo did not show ads was Reddits „fault“.
The ads/subscription here were pre-existing and, depending on who you ask, are fairly good and necessary to make YouTube not a total loss- I can’t claim to know everything Christian believes but I imagine he’s fine with paying reasonable amounts for subscriptions of live services that he actually uses, or paying for the tools to make things.
Also building adblocking into something like this would be a moving target and akin to poking a sleeping bear, which I can understand wanting to avoid.
He was quite Chicago about the reservoir API changes
Calm down, ChatGPT.
Lol shit. Editted.
Christian had a paid and subscription model for Apollo. He was never a vocal free software/no subscription dev.
Re the Reddit API, he didn’t have a problem with it, he had a problem with the ludicrous pricing and the way Reddit gaslit him and the community about it. He’s always been a proponent of reasonable and useful subscription models.
It sounds to me like you don’t really know what you’re talking about.
He was.vocal.about the reddit API changes resulting in a free Apollo app no longer being viable. I never said he was an advocate for a free Apollo app.
Online if someone says “grow up” I find that they are almost always entirely wrong about whatever point they are making.
Slightly disagree. His point is a fine one. His delivery is, comically, immature
If they just had said “you should code that app yourself” I would be less inclined to think they’re calling anyone who doesn’t agree with them a child.
Please calm your tits and take a free trial.
Spaghetti monster, people.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s not like he can make an ad free version of YouTube and release it on Vision, it would probably get instantly taken down.
Premium is pretty great, to be honest.
Yeah, I have it with ReVanced and it’s pretty awesome
Google’s TOS forbids any apps that block ads. Enhancer for YouTube recently removed it as well (although it has to be on the Play store).
Get yourself a DNS blocker.
DNS ad blockers don’t work on YouTube :c
I didn’t even know YT clients were a thing yet (aside usual alternatives ofc 🏴☠️).
It’s not* really a client. The app uses embeds for playback and the regular YouTube website (with css modifications ontop) for browsing.
I thought this was disallowed by the app store.
Not unless it benefits Apple? 🤷♂️
Christian always makes cool stuff happen! Great work buddy :)
Looks cool. I think a couple of my friends could’ve like it.
does google allow stuff like this? i would expect they will try to disable it or simple c&d pretty quickly.
Since a lot of people will come to the comments without reading the article itself:
It is embedding the Youtube video, like a lot of websites and apps do - if you ever watched a youtube video outside of youtube.com or official apps, odds are it is using the same API as that app.
It still shows ads and uses the Youtube website directly for certain parts, but with some custom CSS and JS akin to how browser extensions would work.
You didn’t read the article, did you ?
Course not, what am i, a boomer? :) (Luckily someone found it in their hearts to tldr it for me though.)
It’s ok in this case, since it is only an alternative web view and videos are loaded, like on the website, with ads, except, if you have premium, of course. For ad block, I guess, you have to use an extension for safari, which I don’t know if they are supported on vision safari.
great question. some bloke on social media claims it will support safari extensions https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1aeen10/safari_extensions/
If that’s the case, install Vinegar and SponsorBlock and you’re good to go
Apple is struggling w/ this concept ngl
