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

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

#51

Post by rvnx »

stingraycharles wrote: post #31
mojuba wrote: post #5

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.

I’d like to approach this differently, and think about what it would have cost United Airlines to do it “the right way”, versus what value it brings them. I’m the first to say that this utter bloat is terrible, but most people aren’t really bothered by it. And I can only imagine that they outsourced their app development completely and like to keep costs low. From that perspective, it’s probably much more pragmatic t…

Contrarian opinion here; I understand their logic. It looks like a rational trade-off that the engineers have done.

Increase developer productivity at the expense of hardware.

In this case, engineering is more expensive than hardware (because hardware is at the cost of the user).

The smallest iPhone starts at 128 GB. This means the application takes 500/128000 blocks: 0.4% of the total device storage.

Over time, the iPhones are going to have more and more storage. So, if app size is a problem, and over time, the problem is fixed by itself, why would you invest engineering resources into that ?

You have X engineers with Y amount of working hours, and tons of important things to do. Yes, probably fixing a problem that brings a low amount of complains from end users at the cost of productivity isn't high on the list for them.

EDIT: Possibly interesting source: https://www.androidauthority.com/average-smartphone-storage-...

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

#53

Post by pgalvin »

dont__panic wrote: post #43
MikeCapone wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Stripe app is like 20 megs, Overcast even smaller than that.

Just checked the other day: one of my favorite apps this year, Hyperweb, is just 18.2 MB. Granted, it's only a browser extension for adblocking, styling, etc (sort of a replacement for all of the various Firefox addons I wish I could use on iOS), but the competition, AdGuard, clocks in at nearly 500 MB. I really wonder what some of these apps are doing with this space. My banking app clocks in at 400 MB as well.

I have AdGuard on my phone at ~60MB, you might want to check that.

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

#54

Post by ajsnigrutin »

sneak wrote: post #46
stingraycharles wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to approach this differently, and think about what it would have cost United Airlines to do it “the right way”, versus what value it brings them. I’m the first to say that this utter bloat is terrible, but most people aren’t really bothered by it. And I can only imagine that they outsourced their app development completely and like to keep costs low. From that perspective, it’s probably much more pragmatic t…

If Apple would allow web notifications, most apps wouldn't need to be apps at all, but could simply be webpages that get bookmarked to the launcher. The UX for the user would be, for most non-game apps, identical. The problem is that purchases would no longer be subject to Apple's 10x industry standard (30% instead of 3%) captive credit card payment processing service (for apps), so no web notifications in MobileSafa…

I doubt it...

Even apps without notifications are still apps, because they can take additional data from users, sometimes even location and the whole address book.

Look at sites like reddit for exmaple, which purpusefully cripple the mobile web experience to get the user to install the app.

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

#55

Post by 121789 »

ngoel36 wrote: post #11

File 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.

I agree. And it used to be the worst out of any of them, so props to their dev team.

The video player does give me problems sometimes though

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

#56

Post by arcticbull »

tyingq wrote: post #44
MikeCapone wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Stripe app is like 20 megs, Overcast even smaller than that.

I don't think the Stripe app is a good comparison. Airline apps have to cover shopping, booking, cancellations, seat selection, loyalty programs, check-in, bar code generation and scanning, and so on. Typically with broad support for different currencies, languages, etc, etc. 439mb is obviously not right, but I would expect the app to be fairly large.

> Airline apps have to cover shopping, booking, cancellations, seat selection, loyalty programs, check-in, bar code generation and scanning, and so on.

All of that happens online.

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

#57

Post by mwcampbell »

I think the most effective way to fix this systemic problem would be for app stores to start charging developers for app size, both for storage and outbound transfer. And for desktop apps downloaded from websites, all hosting providers and CDNs should start charging for egress like the big cloud providers do, in acknowledgement of the fact that bandwidth isn't free. Yes, I recently migrated some of my company's infrastructure off of AWS, in part so we wouldn't have to pay for egress. I now believe the world would be better off if we didn't have that option.

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

#58

Post by andai »

arcticbull wrote: post #47
stingraycharles wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to approach this differently, and think about what it would have cost United Airlines to do it “the right way”, versus what value it brings them. I’m the first to say that this utter bloat is terrible, but most people aren’t really bothered by it. And I can only imagine that they outsourced their app development completely and like to keep costs low. From that perspective, it’s probably much more pragmatic t…

> I’d like to approach this differently, and think about what it would have cost United Airlines to do it “the right way”, versus what value it brings them. For a 5-screen 50MB app, sure. For a 5-screen 500MB app that falls pretty flat. [edit] You could fit all of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 or Final Fantasy VII for PS2 in the same amount of space.

Windows 95 required 4MB of RAM and 50-55MB of disk space.

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

#59

Post by sneak »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #54
sneak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple would allow web notifications, most apps wouldn't need to be apps at all, but could simply be webpages that get bookmarked to the launcher. The UX for the user would be, for most non-game apps, identical. The problem is that purchases would no longer be subject to Apple's 10x industry standard (30% instead of 3%) captive credit card payment processing service (for apps), so no web notifications in MobileSafa…

I doubt it... Even apps without notifications are still apps, because they can take additional data from users, sometimes even location and the whole address book. Look at sites like reddit for exmaple, which purpusefully cripple the mobile web experience to get the user to install the app.

The web supports location and photo picker and camera APIs and most apps don't access your address book.
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