I wonder what effect stripping has on crash dump reports though. I don’t know enough about how the App Store manages those, like (if a user opts in to “share information with the developer”), does the developer get less nice dumps as a result of stripping? Surely this can be worked around so long as someone has a symbol table (which they likely do), but the infrastructure might not be in place to do that automatically.
I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
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Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#22What is the purpose of having those framework symbols there in the first place? What was the original intent/use?
Upstream telemetry on a crash?
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#23Even after optimization its massive. What does this app contain? An Embedded game? Shouldn't an airline app be simple.
Especially since a large number of people are probably downloading the app in a panic at the airport on crappy overloaded WiFi or cell signal.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#24File size aside, I can confidently say - United hands down has the best app of any major airline in the world. It's better than their website and often-times even better than calling customer service on their 1K (top loyalty status) line. Many ways to make it better, but if we're comparing it to airlines & hotels, it's extremely well done.
Interesting, I've found Delta's app to be usable (above average?). Sort of funny that a usable app is my above average rating but I've found Delta's app just doesn't get in the way. I'm looking forward to trying United.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#25Reminds me of Facebook’s (in?)famous “Apple can’t handle our scale” thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3m5n2n/faceboo... There was an HN thread about it, too, but I can’t find it.
I've talked with folks that have worked on their code.
I think that it's unreasonable to expect a Lambo (or even a Yugo) to accommodate a 300Kg man.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#26> 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 imagina…
They spend a lot of money trying to offer competitive features on their flights - like maybe watching streaming videos on the plane enabled by the app. To the extent that passengers can't finish a 439MB download of the app just before they board, the app size wastes investments in services of the airline.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#27But 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.
Couple bad development practices with archaic technology for ticketing and we get the worst of both worlds. I've worked with two airlines and it was fairly frightening to see what type of BS they're working with and against.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#28I don't understand why this actually happened, why were the names not stripped? That seems like a terrible thing not just for size but also for insights into the developer's process (in this case). Shouldn't Xcode be doing this automatically? The author even points out that Swift doesn't need them, so why are they there?
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#29Reminds me of Facebook’s (in?)famous “Apple can’t handle our scale” thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3m5n2n/faceboo... There was an HN thread about it, too, but I can’t find it.
I found this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10275396
But no comments, and no votes, so it must have been another thread, thereabouts. It was quite some years ago.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#30"App review failed: your app contains >30% cruft. Please remove cruft and re-submit"