I’m creating this community as a place for discussion around the upcoming Olympus for Lemmy iOS app. The TestFlight build is awaiting approval and should be available in the next 24 hours. In the meantime, here’s a bit about the app and what to expect.
Motivation
I think a lot of us have an alien shaped hole in our chest that needs filling. I, like many of you, was not satisfied with the quality of many of the apps available for browsing lemmy. I got spoiled with Apollo and couldn’t stand to settle, so I set out to build a similar experience for the Fediverse. While I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from Apollo, Olympus is by no means meant to be a direct clone.
Goal
I want to create a browsing experience that can be customized in every conceivable way. From visual personalization to content filtering, you will be able to change as much as is feasible about the app. A lot of the groundwork for this customization has been laid, but the settings are not yet user-accessible. In other words, the backed work is done but the frontend work is not(:
Where you come in
As early adopters and alpha testers, you all will play a pivotal role in the development of the app. Whatever you want, I’ll do it. Just ask. I have an issue tracker set up on GitHub here, please stop by and drop any issues you face in there, or just make a post here. I’d prefer if we keep feature requests in this community and out of the issue tracker, but I won’t be mad if you drop some in there too.
So that about sums it up I think. I’ll keep you guys posted on new releases and will engage with you all in the comments.
- Joe
It’s sad that it’s only for iOS 17. As an iPhone X user I won’t be able to use this app at all.
Unfortunately that appears to be the case. I am certainly considering releasing a version that can run on older iOS versions, but I worry it would be an inferior experience. At the end of the day, I’m building this app in my free time and don’t foresee it ever becoming a significant source of income for me and my family. If I ever do decide to charge for the app it would be for auxiliary features like push notifications and would only cost as much as I need to keep the servers running to avoid operating at a loss. Anything extra I receive would be given back to the community in several forms. I plan on operating my own Lemmy instance so the extra funds would go towards that and anything leftover would be donated to Lemmy. The amount of extra time and effort required to build an app like Olympus is drastically reduced when utilizing the new frameworks available in iOS 17. On top of that it makes for a much more polished and responsive experience for users. If Olympus does ever one day have a significant userbase and I can justify the amount of effort required to support the older platforms I would undoubtedly do it in a heartbeat. I hate the feeling of alienating a large portion of my userbase but for the reasons I’ve given I ultimately decided that it’s better this way in the long run. Luckily there are a ton of other awesome Lemmy apps in active development for iOS!
The TestFlight beta says that I need iOS 17 but afaik it’s not been released yet 🤔
It is currently in beta. I wanted to make sure the app was built with the latest platform tools from Apple and in this case that meant using features only available in the beta. This does mean only folks on the beta can help test, but it also means that I won’t have to rewrite the whole foundation of the app in September when iOS 17 goes public(:
Oh ok I understand! I’ll try again in September 👍
I can’t install the app, it requires iOS 17.
That is correct. Until iOS 17 is released to everyone you will need to join the iOS 17 Beta to use Olympus.
This is because the new iOS version comes with a lot of powerful new features for developers and if I started building it without those features I would need to scrap a lot of my work and start over to take advantage of them.
