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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

#301

Post by lupire »

stefan_ wrote: post #262
lxgr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does it make sense? Every time I click a link in GMail it opens some weirdly broken browser imitation instead of opening it in my chosen browser. This is supremely weird.

Android is worse -- it opens in a real Chrome webview, but in a broken frame that displaces the original app.

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

#302

Post by lupire »

jamra wrote: post #156
tempnow987 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have an authentication option they are building in (ie, sign in with the app to web properties). I've noticed a bunch of stuff seems to be migrating into gmail. My own view is they burnt people out install allo, hangouts etc, and people DO install gmail / have gmail accounts -> so they are going to try to leverage that for distribution a bit more.

That sounds like a reasonable point of view. But it could be that they are just trying to up sale their other services and can more easily do so if it’s bundled in an already used app.

That's what parent said.

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

#303

Post by hirako2000 »

acchow wrote: post #254
lxgr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And introduce a well known problem, not so well solved by OS makers and their developers outside Linux (somewhat). Windows and its developer community kept failing, it has improved in the recent years though, Apple decided long ago they would rather sacrifice space to guarantee a package will execute as intended. (even so, sometimes still fails as native libraries do change and aren't packaged). And upsell larger storage as highly profitable addons.

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

#304

Post by kelnos »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #182
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/…

Do they have comparable functionality; in particular, are they all actual genuine native apps with offline capability; vs a glorified hyperlink to their web interface?

They don't; the Fastmail app is just a web view. It's completely non-functional when there's no internet connection. Really glad to find this out now, and not when I'm in an airport or something somewhere with no internet connection and really need to look at an email related to my travel arrangements.

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

#305

Post by lupire »

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...

> I don't need my email app asking me for video and microphone permissions...

You do if it is also your video chat app. If not, decline permissions.

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

#306

Post by sond813 »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #291
jshchnz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used Emerge Tools size analysis to analyze the binaries, here's some quick findings to answer some questions: [0] Fastmail: smallest of the apps but still could have room for improvement, could save almost 20% of the app size by optimizing their audio files. 71% of the app is the binary. Check out the X-ray here: https://emergeassets.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Screen+Shot+... [1] Gmail: looks like most of their bloat…

For some reason it's really funny to see how much room Fastmail's notification sound takes up. Your analysis for Spark also has a send sound bundled but it's one of the stock Apple ones (Blow). Is there a reason why they have to include their own copy instead of relying on a system sound file?

We've seen this happen with system fonts as well, apps sometimes bundle the San Francisco font with an app instead of relying on a system font. There may be some reasons to include the font or sound file, such as if it changes in different versions of the OS. Of course that would make the app inconsistent with the rest of the OS, which may not be the best behavior. We discuss some other tradeoffs with bundling these system resources on our blog post which covers the Spark app: https://www.emergetools.com/blog/posts/7AppsThatCouldSaveYou...

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

#307

Post by rixed »

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…

> I’ve been judged by prospective employers based on reported app size being seen as correlated to complexity.

This judges the prospective employer more than it judges the candidate, doesn't it?

This is actually nothing new. Back when I was at uni some students claimed to do the same, adding code that served no purpose to inflate the resulting program executable size.

And if my memory serves me well, at this time when windows was still young and software was swapped around on floppies, software sizes started to skyrocket and I've heard then that the secret reason for this lack of care was that size was the easiest way to impress users and the tech press (all while making piracy more inconvenient).

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

#308

Post by aledalgrande »

ben_w wrote: post #300
aledalgrande wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve been on a flight between Berlin and London that cost less than an Amtrak return ticket from Davis to Sacramento, and I’ve also been on a multi-day road trip from Davis to Salt Lake City that, while fun, was only a good financial choice due to four people squeezing into a Prius. While I enjoyed camping and seeing bits of the US that foreigners like me don’t normally see, it’s not entirely clear that the differenc…

In general flying is more expensive in NA because of less competition and bigger distances. That's what I noticed when I moved from Europe to here. Now you have to take expensive tests to fly international both ways. That's why I consider it a luxury.

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

#310

Post by fredoralive »

acchow wrote: post #254
lxgr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect it's a hard issue for the App Store model.

You don't want a situation where someone updates App A, it updates a lib, then App B breaks because it hasn't been checked against the new library. I know you are a good developer who would check that, use major / minor library versions correctly etc. but there are lots of developers on the App Store. Or the fun case of updating App A, it updates a lib and then magical new features appear in App B that Apple doesn't like.

You'd probably have to use some sort of strict library versioning system where every app version is tied to a very specific library version. Are developers in general going to be disciplined enough to actually keep their apps all in sync on a specific version so older versions of the libraries can be removed? Or does this just mean every app from a developer will end up having its own slightly different revision of the lib tied to them? If it's the latter its probably not worth Apple's time adding all the complexity to manage the libraries to the App Store system.

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