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I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
61–70 of 452 posts
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#62Earlier 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…
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…
Perfect example of Wirth's Law in action, sadly.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#63Earlier 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…
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…
This kind of bloat doesn't just affect storage usage, for people with capped data plans these kind of apps are a nightmare
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#64Earlier 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.
My favorite iOS app, Decoupled, is 2.4MB. My favorite Android apps were 5-10x smaller.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#65You know what also have huge app sizes, it's various iOS email app. Fastmail is the only email/calendar app with a reasonable size (just 20MB) [0].
- Gmail (397MB) [1]
- Outlook (328MB) [2]
- Hey (69MB) [3]
- Protonmail (128MB) [4]
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fastmail-email-calendar/id9313...
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gmail-email-by-google/id422689...
[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-outlook/id951937596
[3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hey-email/id1506603805
[4] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/protonmail-encrypted-email/id9...
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#66Earlier 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…
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…
> The smallest iPhone starts at 128 GB.
The smallest iPhone sold now is 128 GB. The iPhone 5C, sold in 2015, had 8 GB internal storage with no expansion options. 439 MiB is a full 5% of the total storage capacity of the iPhone 5C, completely ignoring the amount reserved for the OS that's completely unusable to the user.
The logic used here hurts lower-income people and contributes to climate change by encouraging poor use of device resources -> shorter device lifetimes -> more e-waste and wasted energy.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#67I 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 infra…
If app sizes trend down, it might serve the users well, but it would depress iPhone sales as fewer users would need to upgrade storage.
Which one do you think Apple cares more about?
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#68Earlier 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…
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…
I use a 32GB Android.
A significant fraction of that 32GB is taken by system crap, so a GB makes a difference.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#69Earlier 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…
"The UX for the user would be, for most non-game apps, identical."
In theory, this is true. In practice, it's just hit or miss. I think it's just hard to maintain web across all the different platform and screen sizes. It's probably due to the fact that an iOS developer specializes in one platform and most web development shops will have to support all platforms.
"If Apple would allow web notifications"
I do not use apps because of notifications. I use apps because in general, the performance and experience is much better.
Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app
#70I once flew United and, like the author, didn't realise this until I was on the plane for a ten hour flight. Downloaded the app for Android. I opened it. I was immediately ip-blocked for having a rooted phone, which was then kicked off the network and couldn't get an IP address. United cabin crew then started trying to sell me an iPad loan for the duration. I read a book and vowed never to fly with them again.