That was this summer, not last summer. It's seems that there's a lot of discussion even today about usage going down: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/16icvv2/1_month... . I have noticed a continuing decrease in quality on reddit for many years (as it attracts more people), like all sites that grow and depend on ad revenue, and activity seems to have gone down substantially lately in the few subreddits I still watch.

Developers / professionals are more judicious in where they spend their time / money / effort than most people. When I select a technology for professional use, I look at the long term prospects for the company. Open source is always a positive, as I don't have to worry about a company raising rates and trying to extract more money from us. Feature completeness can be a concern, as is ease of use, but we really only need our needs met and a path to meet our future needs.

The users aren’t the ones paying and the apps do seem to be gone

Apollo, Sync for Reddit, BaconReader etc