The people who paid for a third-party app to make using and working with Reddit easier and more convenient are the power users.
I don't know if you're a regular Reddit user, but if you are have you looked through /r/popular in the past? Recently? What's bubbling to the 'top' of Reddit right now is significantly lower quality content than what used to be there. A lot of that is likely due to so many mods effectively going on strike, but do you think that's going to improve when Reddit's employees remove all those mods, reopen subs and appoint whoever wants to request moderator status as the new mods? Hint: it's not going to be all sunshine and flowers.
I like what one of the mods of IIRC /r/canning posted within the last week or so when Reddit started getting serious with threatening messages - he noted that the mods of that subreddit are there because they have specific subject matter knowledge and canning things wrong kills people. If that subreddit is forced open with mods appointed by Reddit employees and dangerous advice becomes a regular thing, does Reddit have any liability? Can an attorney make enough of a case that they do to drag them into court?
So if you’re constantly popping in and checking things throughout the day, that extra time and effort really adds up. By killing these user friendly apps that a large portion of power users and mods preferred, it’s Reddit showing all of these dedicated unpaid contributors that their time and effort don’t matter to the company. Steve spit directly in all of our faces repeatedly over the past month and now most of us are actively rooting against the success of an IPO. I hope he continues to be the 3rd most successful Reddit cofounder, and his name never gets mentioned in a positive light within YC/HN.
most of the "power users" on the reddit (and I'd guess every other website) are good old fashioned desktop users
The Reddit app is designed to keep you scrolling down your feed past advertisements.
Apollo and its compatriots were used by actual users; they may not have made up a huge percentage, but they made it what it is.