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i discovered this site via a /r/Skeuomorphism post [post link]
June 29, 2023
June 23, 2023
Taking a look at Alienblue Reddit client for IOS 5 before Reddit does a WAR CRIME by killing 3rd party apps [Update status july 1st 2023]
Well today’s post is about a legacy IOS5 Reddit client called Alienblue. Before Reddit does an ABSOLUTE WAR CRIME by killing 3rd party apps join me as we look at the skeuomorphic beauty of this app before it gets assassinated by reddit
but a little side mention to i.reddit.com web client
which was shutdown a few months before the 3rd party apps drama
now with that out of the way we can now explore the Alienblue client taken from an iPad gen1!
Heres the main screen when you boot up alienblue
one cool feature is that Alien blue has a landscape mode (and to this day the official reddit app forces portrait orientation) and it has some themes such as…
Classic blue which is what the image above is.
Lion – Wood
Lion – Linen
Blossom
and Fire
even to this day the official Reddit app doesn’t have themes
Here’s the inbox tile
and here’s were you look at your profile stats
This is the text only post pane. Used for posts that contain text and no photos
heres what it looks like when you upvote or downvote a post
to remove a pane you have to pinch it closed but when it can’t be closed this will happen
this is where you create a post (i haven’t tried it)
here’s the settings tile
and finally to round out this tour this is the biggest feature Alienblue has what made it popular in the first place it has DARK MODE!
to put this in perspective this version of alienblue v2.2.0 was released on September 18th 2013 and the official Reddit app didn’t even get a dark mode until MAY 28 2021!!!!! it took 8 entire years until it got an dark mode talk about lazy dev’s on reddit!
Well that concludes the tour of Alienblue for IOS5
i will make an update on this post after july 1st after the API changes if it survived or not
until then you can join the rebels fighting against reddit’s war crimes at r/save3rdpartyapps
that said farewell Alienblue. Thanks for the memory’s!
UPDATE [July 1st 2023]
so all the 3rd party clients has been terminated but somehow Alienblue survived. Partly because Reddit them self’s acquired Alienblue in 2014 and continued developing it until 2016
Tested Alienblue on my iPad 1st gen at 5pm mountain time