A developer says Reddit could charge him $20 million a year to keep his app working
A developer says Reddit could charge him $20 million a year to keep his app working
A developer says Reddit could charge him $20 million a year to keep his app working
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‘I don’t see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable.’
By
Emma Roth
, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Apollo, the popular Reddit app for iOS, could face millions of dollars in fees as a result of Reddit’s new paid API model. According to an update posted by developer Christian Selig, Reddit could charge Apollo roughly $20 million per year if it continues operating at its current scale.
Reddit announced changes to its API policy in April, which allows the platform to put limits on the number of API requests made by a third-party client like Apollo. But now, we have more details on what exactly this means: Selig says Reddit plans on charging about $12,000 per 50 million requests.
That means Apollo, which made 7 billion API requests last month, would be on the hook to pay $1.7 million per month or $20 million per year to continue operating at the same pace. Selig notes that even if he decided to only keep users who pay to subscribe to Apollo, he still wouldn’t be making enough money to earn a profit. The “average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month,” Selig says, while an Apollo Ultra subscription costs $1.49 per month or $12.99 per year.
“I’m deeply disappointed in this price,” Selig writes. “While Reddit has been communicative and civil throughout this process with half a dozen phone calls back and forth that I thought went really well, I don’t see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable. I hope it goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card.”
It’s still not clear what the future holds for Apollo, though. “My hope at this point is that they listen to the feedback I, other developers, and the community have given them and try to come to an arrangement where both parties can be happy,” Selig tells The Verge. “Outside of that... I’ll have to sit with it for a few more days and think.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t bode well for other third-party Reddit apps, including Rif and Relay, that could be subject to the same kind of fees.
“Without third party apps, I’ll abandon Reddit like I abandoned Twitter”
“The costs we shared with Apollo is the pricing per 1,000 API calls, not a monthly bill,” Tim Rathschmidt, Reddit’s director of consumer and product communications, tells The Verge. “Our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be as equitable as possible. We’ve been, and will continue, to work with third-party apps to help them improve efficiency, which can significantly impact overall cost.”
The whole situation is pretty reminiscent of the way that Twitter revoked access to its API before forcing developers to pay for a subscription plan, some of which could reportedly cost $42,000 per month. Not only did the move upend the way users interact with the platform but it also resulted in issues affecting the accounts that use Twitter’s API to provide transportation or public safety notices.
Reddit’s decision to monetize its API comes just months before Reddit is expected to file for an initial public offering (IPO). The company currently only makes money via advertising, and making developers pay to access its API could make its IPO more attractive to investors. In addition to charging developers, Reddit will also start charging AI companies to use Reddit to train large language models.
Reddit might want to take into account the number of users who might want to leave the platform if their favorite client no longer works. Apollo, for example, enables a bunch of great features for browsing Reddit, like faster loading pages, customizable gestures, a better comments layout, and more. Many users in Selig’s update thread are saying they will leave the platform if Apollo and other third-party apps no longer work, with one user stating, “Without third party apps, I’ll abandon Reddit like I abandoned Twitter.”
Update May 31st, 5:59PM ET: Updated to add a statement from Christian Selig.
Amazon Fire Max 11 review: not the productivity tablet you’re looking for
The Fire Max 11 has the most advanced and refined hardware of any Amazon tablet yet. But it is held back by the same old problems.
By
Dan Seifert
, an editor overseeing The Verge’s product reviews and service journalism programs. Dan has covered the technology world for over a decade at The Verge.
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The Fire Max 11 looks the part of a productive tablet but doesn’t stick the landing.
The Fire Max 11 looks the part of a productive tablet but doesn’t stick the landing.
What does it take to make a tablet more than just a content consumption machine? We’ve seen Apple’s evolving ideas for a productivity tablet for over half a decade; Microsoft directly leaned into productivity from the start.
Amazon, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have a clue. The company has been selling “Productivity Bundles” for its Fire tablets for years, but aside from a cursory acknowledgment that typing on a keyboard is better for productivity than typing on a glass screen, it doesn’t go much further than a name.
I was hoping that the new Fire Max 11 would show me that Amazon has finally cottoned on to what makes a good productivity tablet, something more than just a large screen you use to watch movies on the couch or entertain a toddler on an airplane. Maybe this would be the Amazon tablet that I could recommend for those who want to get work done on a budget — it’s $329.99 all in with keyboard and stylus, after all. (You can also buy it for $229.99 without the accessories.)
Unfortunately, this is just a continuation of the same old story with Amazon Fire tablets: the Fire Max 11 is a fine device for watching movies you bought on Prime Video (or most any other streaming service of your choice), though it’s not markedly better than Amazon’s even cheaper options. But it’s certainly not something I can really recommend for work. And yes, you guessed it, it’s because of the software.
The Fire Max 11 certainly looks the part of a productivity tablet, especially when you get it with the keyboard case and stylus. It’s got a metal chassis, an eight-megapixel camera in the bezel on the long edge of the screen (i.e., the correct spot), a keyboard with integrated trackpad that snaps to the bottom edge via magnets, and a stylus that clings to the side of the tablet, also using magnets. There’s even a fingerprint scanner built into the power button, a first for a Fire tablet.
The point is the Max 11 doesn’t look like a typical Fire tablet, with their plastic backs and generally awkward cases. Amazon made an effort to justify the Max 11’s higher cost with a nicer design, and in that respect, it succeeded. Squint hard enough, and you could mistake it for a much more expensive iPad Pro or Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3.
Stop squinting, though, and it’s easy to see where Amazon didn’t go far enough. The 11-inch LCD screen has a 2000 x 1200 resolution, with punchy colors and wide viewing angles. It’s bright enough for most any indoor environment and, in a pinch, might even work outdoors in the shade. But its 5:3 aspect ratio is cramped when browsing the web or working in documents, and trying to use the Max 11 in portrait orientation is clumsy and awkward. Put it side by side with Apple’s entry-level ninth-gen iPad, and you can see how much bigger the iPad’s screen is thanks to its 4:3 aspect ratio.
The keyboard magnetically attaches to the bottom of the Max 11 and is powered by the tablet, so there’s no Bluetooth pairing or separate charging to worry about with it. The keys are spaced well enough apart and have decent travel, plus there’s a row of function keys for media and system controls.
The Max 11’s keyboard isn’t terrible, but the trackpad is awful.
The Max 11 is the only tablet in Amazon’s lineup that has an aluminum chassis.
But the trackpad frankly sucks: it’s cramped and sticky, which makes two-finger scrolling and gestures hard to perform. It also only supports inverted scrolling (“natural scrolling,” in Apple parlance), with no option to change it to a more conventional scrolling direction.
Like other tablets that use this kind of keyboard case (the 10th-gen iPad and already mentioned Chromebook Duet 3 are but two examples), the Max 11 is floppy and wobbly when trying to use it on my lap. You really have to be parked at a desk or table to use the keyboard with the tablet.
One bright spot here is the stylus. It is a USI 2.0 pointer, complete with a button on the side, and writes smoothly with no perceptible lag. It feels very similar to using an Apple Pencil on an iPad. Samsung’s out-of-the-box writing experience is better with its S Pen, but in terms of hardware, there’s little to complain about with Amazon’s pen.
The eight-core MediaTek processor Amazon’s using in the Max 11 is more powerful than the ones it uses in its lower-tier tablets, and it shows: the Max 11 is snappier and quicker to respond than the others. I can even stream 4K video in the browser, which wasn’t possible on the Fire HD 10 Plus I tested two years ago. The Max 11 won’t hang with Apple’s chips in terms of raw horsepower, but it’s thankfully not a total dog, either.
The Max 11’s skinny aspect ratio means it has much less usable screen space than a ninth-gen iPad, especially in portrait orientation.
As much as Amazon appeared to put effort into the Max 11’s hardware, it seems like it completely forgot about the software. The Max 11 runs the same Fire OS found across Amazon’s lineup, with no improvements or changes to make it more useful for productivity work aside from ensuring support for the stylus and keyboard. It even has ads on the lock screen unless you cough up another $15 to remove them.
The latest version of Fire OS (8.3.1.9) is based on Android 11, a platform that’s nearly three generations out of date. It lacks gestures for navigating the interface, relying instead on three virtual buttons at the bottom of the screen for back, home, and recent apps. It’s capable of split-screening between two apps, but there are no other tweaks or concessions for productivity or multitasking like you’ll find on Android tablets with more modern software. No app dock, no quick launch tray, no pop-up windows.
The homescreen remains a place for Amazon to push you into buying content and products from its various stores, which quickly gets tiresome and spammy-feeling. There are no configurable widgets, no news feeds, nothing beyond basic folders.
The Fire Max 11’s homescreen is basically just a place for Amazon to advertise stuff it wants you to buy.
Two apps side by side is the extent of the Max 11’s multitasking capability.
If you know anything about Amazon’s tablets, you probably know that they don’t have Google’s apps and services available on them, and the Max 11 is no different. That’s not a huge problem when you’re just using a tablet to watch video (unless that video is on YouTube or YouTube TV), but it’s a complete nonstarter for many when it comes to productivity.
In addition to lacking Chrome, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Drive, Google Meet, etc., the Max 11’s app store is missing countless other apps used for getting work done. Outside of Microsoft’s Office suite and Zoom, it’s a ghost town.
The most frustrating part of this is this is the exact same problem I encountered two years ago. I’ll save myself the trouble of writing and just copy and paste what I wrote about the Fire HD 10 Plus in 2021:
Here’s a list of productivity apps I use daily for work that are nowhere to be found on the Fire HD 10 Plus (or any other Amazon tablet):
• Slack
• Asana
• Google Meet
• Feedly (the poorly rated third-party app I tried crashed on login)
• Todoist
• SwiftKey
• NY Times (the app in the Amazon store is just a bookmark to the website)
• Bitwarden (Also missing are LastPass, 1Password, and Dashlane. Logging in to apps with my passwords requires juggling my phone and the tablet, and it’s a huge pain.)
• Two-factor authentication apps
• Pocket (Pocket used to be in the Amazon Appstore, but the company has removed it and now instructs Fire tablet owners to sideload the app from its website.)
I’ll add Airtable, Instapaper, Evernote, and Apple Music to that list today. Beyond the fact that there’s been zero progress on available apps in two years, Amazon didn’t even bother to develop a notes or drawing app to be used with its stylus on the Max 11 like it did for the Kindle Scribe. Both Apple and Samsung have built very competent note-taking apps that take advantage of the features of their respective styluses, but Amazon didn’t even try — it expects you to find something in its decrepit app store.
If you’re hoping to use the Max 11 for drawing or artwork, you won’t find many popular art apps in Amazon’s store. There’s no Sketchbook, Clip Studio Paint, or Infinite Painter. (There is an app called Infinite Painter in Amazon’s store, but it is definitely not the one available on other Android devices.)
Here’s another paragraph from my two-year-old review that’s just as applicable today:
You can get around this problem by sideloading the Google Play Store and its related services onto the Fire HD, but that requires disabling security features, downloading software from sites that don’t have authorization to distribute it, and installing it in a specific order. Frankly, it’s not something most people are going to do, and if Amazon wants to market something called a “Productivity Bundle,” it needs to do a much better job at making its tablet more useful for work tasks.
I was able to draft this article in Google Docs via the Max 11’s rudimentary browser, and I managed my inbox using Microsoft’s Outlook app. (Amazon’s built-in Mail and Calendar apps are so bare-bones, I couldn’t even get them to work with my Google Workspace account.) But when it came time to complete this piece, input it into our CMS, edit and arrange the photos, and publish it, I had to leave the Max 11 behind. Those are things I can do pretty easily on an iPad or even Samsung’s tablets.
If my workflows were more dependent on Microsoft’s apps, such as Word and Teams, I could perhaps use the Max 11 for more things. But even then, the screen is cramped, the trackpad sucks, and I’d just have a much better time on another tablet or even a laptop.
The Fire Max 11 is a cheap tablet for watching video and not much else.
Ultimately, the Max 11 doesn’t change anything about Amazon’s Fire tablets. Its draw is that it’s cheap: the bundle with the stylus and keyboard and six months of Microsoft 365 is the same price as just the ninth-gen iPad alone. That argument is fine for a tablet you’re only going to use for watching video or maybe hand to a kid to keep them entertained on a flight or at a restaurant. Even still, if that’s your planned use cases, Amazon has even cheaper options that work just as well for those things.
But when it comes time to get work done, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to spend a little more money and get something that actually works.
Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Agree to Continue: Amazon Fire Max 11
Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.
In order to use the Fire Max 11, you’ll need to log in with an Amazon account. As part of that process, you’ll also have to agree to Amazon’s mandatory “Conditions of Use” agreement, which encompasses eight separate mandatory terms of use. The agreement itself is done all at once, but you’re agreeing to the following:
There are also three optional agreements. If you want to enable Alexa, you’ll need to agree to the separate Alexa bundle, which includes several of the mandatory agreements above, along with six new ones:
The Fire HD 10 will also prompt you to sign up for Kindle Unlimited, which has its own terms and conditions:
Add it all up, and you have eight mandatory agreements and seven optional ones.
By creating your own icons from photos or other art, you can add your individual style to your homepage
By
Barbara Krasnoff
, a reviews editor who manages how-tos. She’s worked as an editor and writer for almost 40 years. Previously, she was a senior reviews editor for Computerworld.
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Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
Have you ever wanted to make your iPhone your own, with your individualized style and flair? Sure, you can change your homescreen wallpaper. But if you really want to personalize your phone, why not create your own app icons?
It’s doable, using Apple’s built-in Shortcuts app. You actually won’t be replacing the icons that the apps came with — rather, you’ll be creating separate shortcuts that lead to the app. It’s a tedious and time-consuming process, but in the end, you can have a fully customized iPhone homescreen.
Here’s how you do it:
Before you begin, it’s a good idea to find an icon for your new shortcut. There are a bunch of icon sources online (Flaticon, for example), or if you’re artistic and / or ambitious, you can create your own. Whether you use someone else’s or your own, it’s easiest to save the image to Photos.
Okay, let’s begin. Find and tap on the Shortcuts app. It’s pre-installed; if you can’t see it immediately on your homescreen, swipe left until you’re at the App Library and start typing “Shortcuts” into the top search bar.
Once you’re in the app, tap on the plus sign in the upper-right corner.
On the top of the screen, you’ll see that your new shortcut will be named something like “New Shortcut 1.” If you’d rather have your own name, tap on the arrow next to it and select Rename.
Shortcuts can help you create new bookmarks for your apps.
You can name your shortcut whatever you wish.
Once you’ve got your shortcut named, tap on the Add Action button below the name.
You’ll find yourself on a page that, at first glance, may seem a bit confusing. Basically, you’re looking at all the various things that you can do with Shortcuts. While it would be worth it to spend some time here and try out some customizations, right now, what we want to do is change your app icon.
Type Add Action to start the creating your shortcut.
The number of actions available can be confusing.
Type Open app in the search bar and then tap on the Open App link that will show up.
Tap on the word App that appears (rather faintly) next to the word Open in the search bar.
Start typing “Open app” to find the right action.
Click on the light blue word to choose which app you’re using for the shortcut.
You’ll see a list of your phone’s apps; pick the one you want to customize. The name of the app will now be next to the word Open.
Tap Done in the upper right corner. You’ll be taken back to your shortcut page.
Select the information icon (an “i” in a circle) at the bottom of the screen.
Tap Add to Home Screen.
After you’ve chosen the app you’re making a shortcut for, the name will appear next to “Open.”
Now you can add it to the homescreen.
You’ll now see a preview of the icon (which will be a standard, uninteresting icon that Shortcuts automatically adds). Don’t worry — we’re going to make it better.
Tap on the icon under Home Screen Name and Icon. You’ll have the choice of either taking a photo, choosing a photo, or choosing a file. Assuming you’ve already saved an image in Photo, tap on Choose Photo and select the photo you want to use.
If you’ve chosen an existing photo, a highlighted area will indicate what part of the photo will appear as an icon; you can move the photo around until you’re happy with the section indicated. Tap Choose in the lower-right corner.
Don’t like the standard icon? Change it.
The app shows you how much of the photo you can use for your icon.
Now, you’ll see your new icon. If you haven’t added a name for your new shortcut, you can still do it here by typing the name next to the icon.
All ready? Tap Add in the upper right corner.
You should see your new customized icon on your homescreen. Congrats!
You’ll now see what the icon will finally look like.
And here’s your new icon on your homepage.
You can also hide the original app icon so you’ll just have the new one visible. (You don’t want to delete it completely, of course; that would delete the app.)
Long-press on your wallpaper until all your icons start wiggling. Tap on the minus sign of the app you want to hide.
On the pop-up menu, tap Remove from Home Screen. The original icon won’t be deleted, just hidden; you can always find it in the App Library.
Long-press on the background to reveal the minus signs.
Tap on the minus sign and select Remove from Home Screen.
One note: when you use your new icon to go to the app, you will occasionally get a small drop-down notice that tells you what the original app is called and reminds you of the fact that it is a shortcut. But the drop-down will only last for a second or two, so it shouldn’t be much of a bother.
Update September 21st, 2022, 4:55PM ET: This article was originally published on Jun 13th, 2021; it has been updated to accommodate changes in iOS 16.
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