Regarding SD card lifespan: I started to use fstrim on the rootfs weekly from cron, but it is too early to judge if that has any beneficial effects on SD card reliability in the Apollo.
Will post again, once I have a record of 2-3 months using it.
Quoting myself...
From my limited testing with my 2 Apollos this definitely help to improve stability a lot. Didn't had to restart a single time since I have the below in
/etc/crontab:
5 0 * * 0 root /usr/bin/ionice -c 3 /sbin/fstrim -v / | logger
This fstrims the SD card once a week and logs the outcome to syslog.