I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

But even the stripped version is way way too much for an app like this. I can imagine it's layers upon layers of poor, bad and terrible architectural and organizational decisions.

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#6

Post by melony » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

Does iOS not have code splitting? I thought most of iOS app bloat comes from the multiscreen assets. I surprised compiled code takes up so much space.

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#7

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

> it is fair to say this area of app development is complicated to understand.

Not really, but it's also actively suppressed. If they can make as much money with a 439MB app as they can with a 10MB app, why would they waste any time or effort trying to save you a few minutes of download time? If anything, I expect this to get worse, as management is constantly pushing for adoption of frameworks that (in their imagination) speed up time-to-market.

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#8

Post by JTon » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

TL;DR:

> Wow! I honestly wasn’t expecting that much of an improvement. We shaved 187MB off the app size in five minutes by stripping framework symbols.

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#9

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

> While the United dev team should have noticed this much earlier

I suspect it's more that their devs are either junior and don't know any better, or more likely that they just don't care. I've also met some devs who believe whatever comments they read on HN, like "file/memory size don't matter"

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#10

Post by Scoundreller » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #3

This is the kind of thing the App Store review process should be flagging.

Why? Bloat drives sales and upgrades.