The harshness is intentional because Reddit is gearing up to aim themselves at a new audience. They know that they are going to lose a big chunk of their users - they want that. Those of us who were using third party apps were probably the least convertible in terms of profit.
The mentality is our way or the highway, and in this case they win no matter what because for every one of us they lose, they are going to gain 20x. They want those TikTok numbers, and this is how they plan to get there
Nice - yeah, the API is just a convenient way to access the data. The truth is that if a browser can view reddit.com, a script can pull the data and put it somewhere else.
Personally, I'm working on a script to scrape certain subs every few days and display them in a page I'm self-hosting. Who needs their API? All I really care about over there anymore is tech related info I need for my job.
When it comes to personal stuff I only use Firefox, regardless of device. But as a web developer I end up having to use them all at various times, and Safari isn't too bad.
I'm also a 7T user. The thing I expect to miss the most is the pop up front facing camera, that still feels cool as hell.