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App sizes are out of control

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Re: App sizes are out of control

#261

Post by Groxx »

mfabbri77 wrote: post #180
vladdanilov wrote: post #159

The situation is messy. Take Facebook.app. The reported size on the App Store is 377MB, the distributed .ipa is 241MB. But it is a universal app which includes fat binaries arm_v7 and arm64 and all the graphics 1x, 2x and 3x. App Thinning halves that size for end users. Yet the App Store reports the full size. There's more. App Store also provides some sort of delta updates [1], which save a lot bandwidth, but failin…

I was wondering why not use SVG (or any other vector file format) files and render all the graphic on the device, instead of including tons of PNG at various resolutions.

Fuzzy reasons abound, but you do occasionally see this. One major often-complete-blocker that I've seen though has been ungood rendering, so results aren't always identical on all devices. You can't really rely on the device's possibly-weird implementation (who knows what the OEM did to it)(except on iThings probably), so you're forced to bundle an svg renderer that works reliably on all devices and has consistent behavior, and good luck finding a high quality lib that does that[1]. And, to be friendly to the designers, it has to be reasonably full-featured.

[1]: but if you know of one, I'd love to use it!

Re: App sizes are out of control

#262

Post by vanderZwan »

wott wrote: post #139
vanderZwan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is that they probably use huge PNGs to make sure the flat graphics are clean. You know, the kind that are perfectly suitable for vector graphics .

Unless your graphic designer provides you with vector graphics embedding a vector for each pixel of the rasterised image of the original vector graphic. Sigh...

That's almost as bad as the autogenerated SVG I once was sent that used hundreds of thousands of think horizontal lines to fill an area. Instead of, you know, a filled polygon.

The sheer number of vectors could make any renderer I threw at it crash.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#263

Post by Apocryphon »

emodendroket wrote: post #252
marcosdumay wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I'm not currently an Uber customer because their app is too big and I don't have enough spare space on my phone. There were a few times already that I thought about using them, but couldn't install it right at the time.

OK, so that's one. How many people even look? I have no idea what size the applications on my phone are.

Do you have a lot of space on your phone, or just not use a lot of apps or media? People might not have the same situation as you.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#264

Post by e12e »

LocalH wrote: post #210
mfabbri77 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering why not use SVG (or any other vector file format) files and render all the graphic on the device, instead of including tons of PNG at various resolutions.

Because the experience is subpar when that is done. It is impossible to create a vector image that will result in clean, unblurred strokes at arbitrary small pixel sizes. Don't even suggest using TrueType-style hinting, I don't think any designer would want to touch that with a 10 foot pole.

I might agree that for very small icons (eg: targeting a ~VGA or 800x600 to maybe 1024x76 phone screen) hand painted bitmap graphics might be best... but shouldn't it be enough to ship 16x16 (or whatever) icons along with vector graphics for high-resolution screens? And if it's too slow to live-render the graphics, how about rendering custom icon sets (etc) on install - using the gpu, and then cache on the device?

Re: App sizes are out of control

#265

Post by politician »

marcosdumay wrote: post #236
jamescostian wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript people do not create libleftpad.so, they create libleftpad.o (metaphorically speaking), which will not clutter up your distribution, it will just clutter up some apps. I'd rather see 50 little files like libleftpad.o than 5 gigantic libraries. But I agree with what you're saying in the second paragraph, which actually sounds just like what my GP meant by using "Webpack to throw away what isn't used". Havin…

> I'd rather see 50 little files like libleftpad.o than 5 gigantic libraries. And then you'll have to use software written in 50 different styles, with 50 different type and error conventions, with pieces that couple together or not at random.

> And then you'll have to use software written in 50 different styles, with 50 different type and error conventions, with pieces that couple together or not at random.

All of which matters not one hoot to folks _using_ the software.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#266

Post by TylerE »

Groxx wrote: post #261
mfabbri77 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering why not use SVG (or any other vector file format) files and render all the graphic on the device, instead of including tons of PNG at various resolutions.

Fuzzy reasons abound, but you do occasionally see this. One major often-complete-blocker that I've seen though has been ungood rendering, so results aren't always identical on all devices. You can't really rely on the device's possibly-weird implementation (who knows what the OEM did to it)(except on iThings probably), so you're forced to bundle an svg renderer that works reliably on all devices and has consistent be…

Hand tweaking for specific resolutions is an art. You can't expect to just render SVG and get equivalent results.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#267

Post by crazygringo »

It's not just the install size, but apps which accumulate and seemingly never delete data.

For a while I tried to get by with a 16GB iPhone SE thinking I keep everything in the cloud, so why would I ever need 64GB? Well every couple of months I'd have to delete and re-install NYTimes and reddit and some magazine apps because they just grew and grew and grew in storage until I had 0 space left. Like they simply cache everything you've ever looked at.

It's dumb, because other apps are intelligent -- they'll automatically purge cache data when storage gets too low. But not NYTimes. Not reddit. It seems pretty inexcusable, really.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#268

Post by Simon_says »

mfabbri77 wrote: post #180
vladdanilov wrote: post #159

The situation is messy. Take Facebook.app. The reported size on the App Store is 377MB, the distributed .ipa is 241MB. But it is a universal app which includes fat binaries arm_v7 and arm64 and all the graphics 1x, 2x and 3x. App Thinning halves that size for end users. Yet the App Store reports the full size. There's more. App Store also provides some sort of delta updates [1], which save a lot bandwidth, but failin…

I was wondering why not use SVG (or any other vector file format) files and render all the graphic on the device, instead of including tons of PNG at various resolutions.

For some things like icons and UI elements, the automated resizing gives worse (fuzzy) results than a human artist. It makes a difference.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#269

Post by MBCook »

ehsankia wrote: post #170
jarjoura wrote: post #146

Those numbers are mostly unfair. For some reason in the iOS 10 App Store, Apple started listing the complete fat (both 32-bit and 64-bit archs) submitted .ipa size. If you want to easily test that, clear your cellular data usage, update one of those apps (or install) and then go back to settings and see the actual bytes transferred. Also, most everyone is using Swift in some small part, so that automatically includes…

I'm curious, does anyone have the equivalent app sizes on Android? I'd love to see a comparison, to see if this is more of a platform issue as mentioned in a few comments, or a developer issue. I guess we also should be looking at the actual data transferred rather than the number shown on the store page.

I'm 100% willing to believe this is a universal problem and is just as bad as Android. I'd be FLOORED if Android apps were significantly smaller.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#270

Post by crazygringo »

vanderZwan wrote: post #50
vec wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge chunk of that probably goes to, well, videos or hi-res photographs to be used in building the UI. Hi-res splash screens plus a bunch of hero images plus 2+ prerendered sizes of each display element for different pixel densities plus a dozen 30 second tutorial videos can easily add up to a couple hundred megs of assets alone.

The worst part is that they probably use huge PNGs to make sure the flat graphics are clean. You know, the kind that are perfectly suitable for vector graphics .

Flat graphics are actually extremely compressible with PNG's.

That's actually one of the positives from moving away from gradients and shadows everywhere, funnily enough.

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