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App sizes are out of control

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Re: App sizes are out of control

#411

Post by kronos29296 »

habosa wrote: post #359

I am surprised at all of the app developer shaming in this thread. Is it really likely that every developer working on a popular BigCorp app is an idiot who imports 10MB libraries every time he/she faces the slightest challenge? It's much more likely that app developers are optimizing for many things, including app size, but reducing app size has a bad cost/benefit ratio. Here are some decisions that may bloat your a…

Yet the installed size of my facebook app on android is 350MB and since the total phone memory is 2 GB I have a storage problem (less than ideal free space). While facebook lite is not a smooth experience compared to the full app.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#412

Post by princekolt »

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.

SVGs are a problem because they don't have a "preferred size" parameter. On Xcode you can use PDF files for icons (which are much like SVG, but state "all my points are relative to the size WxH). Once you have that you can make pixel-perfect icons that are always rendered sharply.

The catch is that Xcode compiles all those PDFs to PNGs before bundling them into the .ipa, so in the end you have a bitmap either way...

Re: App sizes are out of control

#413

Post by kronos29296 »

tomerv wrote: post #279
MBCook wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I checked now. LinkedIn: 20.36MB Facebook: 76.59MB Twitter: 25.71MB That's about 1/8th the size of those apps on iOS. Those are just the first three apps in use article, I'm sure the rest are about the same.

Its 174 MB installed with another 150 on Data which is a thing but I hardly use facebook once a day (just to see notifications not even the feed) which is quite big and no cleaner is going to delete the Data as it is not cache. Facebook app is a big one and I don't even know why.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#414

Post by intoverflow2 »

jamieomatthews wrote: post #134
Apocryphon wrote: post #120

It's pretty rich how these companies are well known for the rigor they apply to interviewing candidates on technical subjects, yet actually drop the ball in production with poor engineering like this. Where does that rigor go after the interviews are done? Are there any examples of well-known apps from large organizations that aren't excessively large in size?

I work on Amazon Prime Photos iOS app. It's currently 60mb in size, and a good chunk of that is the Swift runtime. Even the main Amazon shopping app is less than 100mb.

>Even the main Amazon shopping app is less than 100mb.

109 on my device, not sure why it needs over 100 for a menu/search and checkout function that relies entirely on external data.

Also another commenter said Alexa was 78 when it's 124 for me and does even less than the shopping app.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#415

Post by oblio »

real-hacker wrote: post #400

Another question has to be asked: do they have the motivation to reduce the size of apps? Earlier this year, Wechat released a revolutionary (kinda) feature called 'Miniapp', it supports releasing apps within Wechat itself (a bunch of xml/js files). All major Internet companies published their own miniapp in Wechat, which include s the most-used feature of their full app, and only takes less than 1MB of space. Guess…

They don't. It's the same race we had at the start of the PC race. Most of the "optimizers" optimized themselves out of existence while twiddling bits in assembler.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#416

Post by hellofunk »

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.

As someone who has spent a lot of time with SVG, I can assure you there are very wide discrepancies in how the same file renders even using different tools on the same platform, let alone cross platform.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#417

Post by babesh »

xg15 wrote: post #396
babesh wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For iOS, there are the shared libraries provided by the OS. UIKit, PhotoKit, etc... Shared libraries beyond that would bring the hell of version incompatibility. One need only look at Apple’s evolution of Swift where there still isn’t binary compatibility? Most people don’t want to crack open their phone and set paths so that their app has a version of Python that works with it. Also shared libraries can be giant sec…

> Shared libraries beyond that would bring the hell of version incompatibility This is more a general question but I've never understand why so many shared library systems have the restriction of "only one version of a library". What stops you from storing different versions of the same library for different apps? (I understand the problem with transitive dependencies - e.g. if the same app transitively depends on tw…

For Apple libraries, it is because the latest framework could be providing a completely different implementation and they both want and need everyone on that implementation. For instance, they reimplemented Photos, introducing a new interface, maintaining the old interface but deprecating it.

Edit: in other words, common data.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#419

Post by gtramont »

dallamaneni wrote: post #82

I have been replacing traditional apps with PWA's or mobile websites wherever possible (on Android). They hardly take up any space and also seem to behave well (drains less battery) compared to traditional apps. I could replace the following with PWAs: - Twitter - Uber - Lyft - Google news - Instagram - Flipboard - Shopping sites like Walmart, Wish and many more. Facebook and Amazon have no PWA's but have mobile webs…

For the developers out there, here's one option for native applications that leverages the beauty of the web: http://jasonette.com/

Re: App sizes are out of control

#420

Post by katastic »

jcelerier wrote: post #208
richardwhiuk wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that Devs don't care. It's because every metric anyone has ever gathered says that users don't care.

> It's because every metric anyone has ever gathered says that users don't care. A lot of people go to wal-mart. Doesn't mean that it's a good thing overall for mankind

Adding onto this comment because people are latching onto the wrong part.

It's a greedy search. Just because you optimize for your local best interests, doesn't mean the COMMUNITY will benefit overall and the ecosystem itself suffers.

Look at how slow, ad-filled, and error-prone websites are these days.

So yeah, companies and people should be at least _concerned_ with the disparity between "best for me" and "best for all of us." Otherwise, we get things like rampant pollution. Well, this is app pollution.

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