A ton of things and personnel changed at Reddit in the last year. It's basically being run by a completely different group of people. The people who made the decision to purchase alien blue are no longer with the company.

If you ask me, it was the right decision to start from scratch with a new app. Alien blue was originally released on iOS 3 or 4 (can't remember off the top of my head). Providing updates had become a real chore over the years. Adding one feature would break three others. That's why updates slowed to just once a year. At some point, it's better to just start over. Trying to improve alien blue any further would have just been a nightmare.

Jase had said before that if he could start over with the app, he'd do a bunch of things different. How many apps on your phone right now are still in development from iOS 3? I'd be willing to bet none of them are.

Also, Jase is still involved and contributing to the new app. Anybody who is in the beta for the new app will tell you that it shows a lot potential. I've personally been using it about 70% of the time, and I don't think anybody around here is a bigger fan of alien blue than myself. I messed around with the android beta for a while, but wasn't impressed. That may have to do with my general unfamiliarity with android, and my strong preference for iOS though. But this iOS version is beautiful, and absolutely headed in the right direction. Of course it's missing some things, but that's to be expected at this point, and have a lot of confidence in the people behind the app now to keep the updates and improvements coming.

So, if you ask me, this is all for the better. Alien blue had an amazing run, but it was slowly dying, and it would not have been practical to try and save it. Even if Reddit had never bought it, it had gotten to the point where I think Jase was ready to let it die out anyhow.