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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

#211

Post by mech4bg »

lentil_soup wrote: post #200
mech4bg wrote: post #188

>It’s becoming somewhat of a popular trend in the airline industry to cut costs by having the passenger bring the hardware, and as an added bonus they get to force their way into your coveted list of installed apps. TBH I see this as a positive - less weight on the plane, less fuel consumed, less waste when these screens are junked, etc. I personally always take a ton of videos with me and just watch my own stuff, I…

> less weight on the plane, less fuel consumed For a plane that's negligible. Tbh, I don't want to sit on a 12hr flight watching a phone screen. I have to hold it on my hand, have nowhere to put it while eating, I have to plug it in to a charger as well (and it's never guaranteed there'll be a plug) + what the OP said about having to download more stuff to my phone I don't want or I might not have space for.

FWIW I've noticed on a lot of airlines removing the screens have phone holders in their place and always have a USB charger.

It's a moderate weight saving, there are some details in this article: https://www.fastcompany.com/3034196/airlines-are-tossing-sea...

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

#212

Post by PragmaticPulp »

thaway2839 wrote: post #130
hammock wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a frequent and mostly non-loyal flier, I can say despite all its faults the United app is far and away the best airline app in the US: fast, easy to navigate, powerful, useful and often pleasantly surprising. American is the only other app that compares, I can't stand to use any other airlines' apps.

One could argue that maybe the developers of the app were optimizing for the right things. Usability, performance, etc., as opposed to disk space.

In this case, shipping symbols with the app is almost certainly an oversight. Stripping symbols of shipped binaries is standard good practice.

That said, I don't think the difference between a 40MB app and a 400MB app is all that critical these days. Optimizing for development speed and user experience over an absolutely minimal download size is a reasonable choice.

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

#213

Post by Nition »

bouke wrote: post #147
throw10920 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 poo…

And even 2 of those 8 GiB were taken up by the OS. So that leaves just 6 GiB. Now we’re already at 7%. That’s valuable storage that you cannot use to fill with holiday pictures.

I had the 8GB iPhone 5C. The OS (iOS 10) actually took up nearly 4GB of that 8GB.

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

#215

Post by sb057 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #180
azalemeth wrote: post #70

I 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.

Unrelated to their inflight entertainment, United pulled this stunt on me the other day. - Flight at 11AM, boarding at 10:20. - Show up at 10:25, boarding doors are closed. - "Didn't boarding start 5 minutes ago" - "Yeah we close the doors once 95% of people show up, sorry, you should show up when boarding starts" - "Yeah but didn't boarding start 5 minutes ago, how was I to know" - "You should have known, sorry"

>Yeah we close the doors once 95% of people show up

So they are essentially scamming 5% of passengers out of their tickets?

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

#216

Post by pletnes »

jacobr wrote: post #193
wodenokoto wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fastmail is the only email/calendar app with a reasonable size (just 20MB) It's because it doesn't contain anything. You can't even see any UI, let alone emails without being connected to the internet.

I just went into airplane mode to try, and the app works fine on iOS. It shows a message about not being able to fetch new emails.

I just did the same, and it says that I need to be connected to see my emails. «Are you in airplane mode?»

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

#217

Post by wodenokoto »

jacobr wrote: post #193
wodenokoto wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fastmail is the only email/calendar app with a reasonable size (just 20MB) It's because it doesn't contain anything. You can't even see any UI, let alone emails without being connected to the internet.

I just went into airplane mode to try, and the app works fine on iOS. It shows a message about not being able to fetch new emails.

Did you remember to turn off wifi and close the app (not just go back to the main screen and back into the app)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201330

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

#218

Post by varenc »

tyingq wrote: post #199
azalemeth wrote: post #70

I 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.

I'm surprised there would be that kind of integration between the United app and their on-board WiFi, which appears to be run by Panasonic. It sounds like you're saying the United app noticed your phone was rooted, and somehow it notified the on-board WiFi to block your ip/mac? Or am I not reading this right?

That's also how I read it, which astounds me. Would be technically impressive if it worked like that. And extra vindictive since even if they don't allow rooted devices to play DRM'd video, there's no good reason why they should also be prevented from buying in-flight internet.

(one solution if that's really how it works: rotate your mac address, reconnect, and then never open up the United app again so it can't squeal on you.)

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

#219

Post by brnt »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #113
alberth wrote: post #65

You 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/…

The new Shortwave is only 22Mb! It's also just a web view like Fastmail though.

So... how does a webview, which is a call to a system api, take 22MB?

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

#220

Post by gopher_space »

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.

The tl;dr was halfway through the article.

> pushing code into frameworks has been a best practice for a while

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