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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

#251

Post by potatolicious »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #212
thaway2839 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to mention the surface area of the app is often larger than it appears to a single user, especially for companies this large whose customer bases are this wide.

It's tempting to think about the United app as something very simple:

- Search for flights

- Run through the booking flow for flights

- Look up existing bookings

- Change existing bookings

But this ignores a lot of scope that's actually critical for a company whose products are very complicated:

- ID verification for international travel

- Custom functionality for large institutional cu stomers (government, corporate)

- Functionality for ancillary services: in-air streaming entertainment, in-airport services like lounges and baggage checks, loyalty program, loyalty-tier-specific functionality like priority connections.

- ... etc.

In this case the lack of stripping symbols seems like a very easy win and definitely is an example of sloppiness, but the idea that the binary should definitively be < 100MB seems to ignore a lot of scope.

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

#252

Post by alberth »

Bilal_io wrote: post #242
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/…

I checked on Android. Gmail's app size is 113mb, while Tutanota is 4.58mb I wonder why the Gmail app is almost 4x the size on iOS.

Interesting, I just found this (dated) article.

https://mobilityarena.com/ios-apps-are-larger-than-android-a...

It supports your claim that iOS app sizes are 3-10x bigger than Android.

I wonder why. The article makes some guesses but still, the magnitude difference is significant.

Even Fastmail, which has the smallest iOS email app, is still 2x bigger on iOS (20MB) vs Android (10MB).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastmail.a...

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

#253

Post by tyingq »

agar wrote: post #247
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.

This was probably a response to a hack that occurred in 2014. It wouldn't surprise me if it was mandated by the FAA or similar regulatory body. https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/us/fbi-hacker-flight-computer... > During FBI interviews in February and March, the document says, Roberts told investigators he hacked into in-flight entertainment systems aboard aircraft. He claimed to have done so 15 to 20 times from 2011 to…

I doubt it. You can bring a "rooted" linux laptop onto the plane and it works, so banning rooted phones from inflight WiFi would be a little silly.

I am interested in the linked story, but it's very odd that a passenger wifi network would be cross-connected with flight controls.

That the network on a non-wifi seatback entertainment system could be is a little more believable, but I'm still curious how it wouldn't have resulted in an extended grounding of all aircraft of that type if it were true. There was no grounding, or order to modify that system following his twitter posts and subsequent arrest.

Edit: If you search around for what happened after the incident described above, it seems pretty clear he did not send any commands to flight systems. He seems knowledgeable about them, but seems to perhaps have been caught out talking about a theoretical scenario as if it happened. He wasn't charged, and as mentioned, no actions were taken to change anything. I suspect the networks are properly isolated.

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

#254

Post by acchow »

lxgr wrote: post #179
meibo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add some context, Gmail also includes a lot of the core workspace apps(chat, meetings, etc) if you do have a workspace account, which most users will likely never see. All of that isn't needed on regular accounts, I guess, but it's probably easier for them to ship it as one app because people might get confused/are able to switch between their workspace and regular accounts in the app. Gmail is also supposed to be…

Gmail being a "hub app" makes some sense, actually (unless you're not using Chat or Meet, of course). What annoys me much more than that is that Docs, Sheets and Presentations all are multi-hundred megabyte standalone apps, of which I'm guessing 80%-90% of the code is identical/pulled in from some non-shared library.

I wonder when iOS will allow for dynamically linked shared libraries from the same Developer account.

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

#255

Post by bmicraft »

yuliyp wrote: post #123
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with 7-year-old phones are not really a target group a company selling luxury stuff is going to bother optimizing for.

United Airlines is not a luxury product.

Flying often enough to justify even installing the app/getting any benefits from it surely does count as luxury flying though?

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

#256

Post by acchow »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #196
alberth wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't chat, meeting, etc all separate apps from Google (and not included in the core Gmail app). https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-chat/id1163852619 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-meet/id1013231476

They've shoved all that functionality into the Gmail app. I actually uninstalled Gmail because it became the default app to open Google Meet video calls, even with Google Meet installed. I don't need my email app asking me for video and microphone permissions...

What happens if you uninstall all the Google apps and then reinstall them in a different order? (Google Meet first)

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

#257

Post by hadlock »

tschwimmer wrote: post #84
rvnx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is not the most relevant tradeoff. The United App is the only way to watch in-flight entertainment on many United Flights (esp. on newer planes without seatback screens). Every time I fly United, they make an announcement that says "Make sure to download the app before we take off because you can't do it once we're in the air!" and then I see everyone whip out their phones and tablets. Usually that's 10m or so b…

Also the only way to order adult beverages

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

#258

Post by rekoil »

mdoms wrote: post #209
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.

Not defending the blocking of rooted devices, but I think it's excellent that airlines are relying on people bringing their own hardware. I think you'd struggle to find a single person in an airport who isn't carrying a screen with them today, so seat-back screens feel very redundant to me.

As a person who carries a 5.4" iPhone 12 mini, please keep seat-back screens. I wouldn't mind if they were just HDMI-devices I can extend my devices screen to though, that would be amazing!

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

#259

Post by ricardobayes »

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/…

I had a financial app bloat up to 800MB+ due to some botched incremental updates. I firmly believe in 2022 those who care about bundle sizes are in minority. I personally come from an embedded dev world so I got accustomed to fighting for bytes as I learned to program. Nowadays if I suggest something to save space, I usually get a blank stare.

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

#260

Post by klodolph »

vmception wrote: post #240
winrid wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding offline access would indeed be nice, but that wouldn't even add 2mb of code. I have entire native mobile games with multiplayer under 3mb. EDIT: just realized the app is a web view. Sigh

I’ve been judged by prospective employers based on reported app size being seen as correlated to complexity. VC backed startup I worked at for 18 months with a 12 megabyte app size due to efficient design choices? Must be a joke So now I just add a 150 megabyte dummy file at everyone else’s expense I’m sure there is a lot of that going on given how long some job roles were open, I have to imagine that every mobile de…

On the other hand, when your app is actually functional at 12 MB, you'll find users from more parts of the world using it.
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