Apollo Client 0.8 has improved its size, speed, and simplicity by focusing on making it the fastest, smallest, and most modular caching GraphQL client. The goal is to simplify the core and make it incredibly fast while providing a seamless user experience. This release aims to address issues such as data loading not getting in the way when building an app, page load times affecting user retention, and improving type safety for GraphQL results. Key improvements include removing dependencies, adding tree shaking and code splitting, and introducing a new fragment syntax. The update also includes bug fixes, refactoring, and added features like support for GraphQL null input values and optional arguments. The community's contributions have been instrumental in this release, with over 200 PRs merged and 200 issues closed on GitHub.