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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

#271

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

anthk wrote: post #128
petters wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ridiculous. The complete size of Mario 64 with all assets is 6MB.

And the whole 9front weights less than those apps. When I was a Windows user, a video player install of more than 80MB would be slightly bloated. Today my OpenBSD install uses less than 3GB and it has far more stuff than a phone install. Golang binaries are like 5-15x the size of a dinamically linked C binary, yes, but at least they provide everything and run everywhere.

C and Go are at a very similar level of portability. Statically link your C binary with musl and it will run everywhere the Go binary (built on the same system) would. Neither Go nor C will run outside their architecture or OS, but both can cross compile.

Go makes both processes more user friendly. Statically linking with musl is simple in C (musl-gcc), but cross compiling is a bit of a pain the ass to set up (building your toolchain from the ground up). Not too bad, and if you're messing with building portable executable this kind of knowledge is assumed.

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

#272

Post by ComradePhil »

alberth wrote: post #252
Bilal_io wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/app…

The sizes mean different things in different platforms. Google reports the download size, Apple reports the size that the app will consume on your device. Both have their uses but you shouldn't compare the two.

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

#273

Post by acchow »

rvnx wrote: post #51
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…

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

You can buy a brand new, unlocked iPhone 12 from Apple. It starts at 64GB for $729

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-12

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

#276

Post by emteycz »

klodolph wrote: post #260
vmception wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can geofence a Lite version

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

#277

Post by nyanpasu64 »

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.

Shipping a 40MB app instead of shameful.

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

#278

Post by MH15 »

bluedino wrote: post #111
notyourwork wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Spirit app installs a bitcoin miner.

I usually fly Spirit right now (college student) so I'd love to see a source for this.

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

#279

Post by Symbiote »

aledalgrande wrote: post #181
dymk wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying anywhere, period, is a luxury

Flying in NA, with covid, is a luxury. Europe is a different story. Edit: why the downvotes? You can get flights for 50 bucks to go to different countries in Europe.

Maybe people don't believe it.

The cheapest flight I can see on SouthWest.com is $60, for a 1 hour journey from Atlanta to South Carolina.

The cheapest flight with Ryanair from Copenhagen is $9, though it doesn't include checked luggage. It's also an hour.

An even cheaper one is Kraków to Eindhoven, 2 hours, $6. There are fewer dates for this price though.

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

#280

Post by ciphol »

brianwawok wrote: post #236
blah_humbug wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that true of other everyday things (eg, booking a session my local gym), and find it incredibly depressing. Not only have we devised a world where impersonal, digital communication is the way things get done, but we must also buy a smartphone to even start accessing it.

I find it a great step forward in society, for every Gym in the world to not need to staff someone to sit there and answer phone call questions around (what are your hours? can I book X for Y?). Those are done much faster with robots and lower our costs.

Those are done much better with a web site (for many purposes, a static website with no Javascript is sufficient!) than by downloading a gigantic possibly-insecure app.
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