Apollo is a different type of search engine. Traditional search engines (like Google) are great for discovery when you’re trying to find the answer to a question, but you don’t know what you’re looking for.

However, they’re very poor at recall and synthesis when you’ve seen something before on the internet somewhere but can’t remember where. Trying to find it becomes a nightmare - how can you synthezize the great material on the internet when you forgot where it even was? I’ve wasted many an hour combing through Google and my search history to look up a good article, blog post, or just something I’ve seen before.

If you scan Apollo’s README, you’ll know the author has put a lot of thought into this project. The more I grokked it, the more I thought of Monocle (which we’re doing an episode about soon). Turns out, it’s a direct inspiration (along with Serenity OS for the design).