I don't understand why the apps in question (Apollo etc) care about the Reddit API and its terms at all.
Those apps are basically browsers. Applications to browse Reddit, right?
Why not use the "html over http" API which every other browser also uses?
Yes, you would have to harden the code a bit so it gracefully deals with the structure of the html changing sometimes. And you would have to update the parser from time to time. But is that such a big problem?
Also: When using the API, how is the free API limit not enough? In TFA it says "100 queries per minute per OAuth client id". That is per user, right? Why does it take more than 100 API requests per minute to use reddit?
Those apps are basically browsers. Applications to browse Reddit, right?
Why not use the "html over http" API which every other browser also uses?
Yes, you would have to harden the code a bit so it gracefully deals with the structure of the html changing sometimes. And you would have to update the parser from time to time. But is that such a big problem?
Also: When using the API, how is the free API limit not enough? In TFA it says "100 queries per minute per OAuth client id". That is per user, right? Why does it take more than 100 API requests per minute to use reddit?