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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

#381

Post by Symbiote »

spc476 wrote: post #355
gbear605 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of trips, Amtrak is about the same as flying. Looking at a round trip from NYC to Chicago, on the arbitrary dates of March 26 to April 9, Amtrak costs $180 while Kayak shows the cheapest flights at $159. Of course, Amtrak takes much longer (20 hours) but is less hassle, and at that price the flight only lets you take one carry-on while Amtrak lets you bring two checked bags and two carry-ons. Adding checked…

NYC to Chicago probably has a decent customer base to support that price point. For amusement, try Miami/Seattle via Amtrak. It's possible, since I looked up the route [1]. One week transit time one way, at $2,000 (I don't recall if the price was round trip or just one way). And trying to work on the train was fun (too "swishy" to use the computer: http://boston.conman.org/2015/08/05.2 ). Totally not worth it for me.…

I don't think I kept it, but a couple of years ago I made a video of a £1 coin (as thick as two US pennies) balanced in a shallow groove in the table on a long distance train in Denmark. It was about 30km before it fell over.

(But maintaining the track to this quality would be even more expensive if there was as much freight on it as tracks in the USA carry.)

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

#382

Post by asdff »

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.

They aren't doing it to be green, they are doing it to save money on chair replacements. I'm surprised how rare it is even to get a seat with power hookups these days. Even in the actual airport itself plugs are still relatively rare and closely guarded, actual functioning plugs rarer still. I remember when economy meant a new set of headphones and the billboard top 20 playing from the arm rest.

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

#383

Post by pcurve »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #358

Until app stores start penalizing apps for their size, there is little incentive for developers to improve. And I guess the phone makers don't mind forcing people to buy new phones - although a shortage of space would also get people to stop buying more apps, so maybe that doesn't play into it as much as a desire to keep developers happy. Notably, the Google Play Store doesn't even show the app size. I bet just showi…

Yeah, and given App Store owners (AAPL GOOG) have vested interest in selling more phones (or increase share), they won't be penalizing any time soon.

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

#384

Post by nopzor »

tedunangst wrote: post #370
wrggwwr wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, common air carriers do not run on anarchy and made-up rules. United, like every airline, has a Contract of Carriage, which clearly requires being at the gate only 15 minutes before a scheduled domestic flight: > All Passengers must be present at the loading gate for boarding at least 15 minutes prior to scheduled departure. The OP was clearly involuntarily denied boarding even if it was an international flig…

OP showed up five minutes late, not fifteen minutes early.

op was more than fifteen minutes early to the departure time. boarding time is irrelevant to the clause in the coc.

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

#386

Post by dwaite »

lxgr wrote: post #223
squeaky-clean wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This specific case is more of an artifact of iOS's inability to handle multiple apps declaring the same URI launch scheme cleanly than a problem with Gmail on iOS, in my opinion. Picking a default handler for a given scheme seems like a problem best solved at the OS level, and I don't even know how an app developer would be able to fix that.

As Apple has been steering people away from custom URI schemes, I doubt they will ever support platform-level dialogs for the user to select an app or a system wide 'open in' default.

Coincidentally, the methods used for this today in macOS (in apps that prompt to set themselves as the defaults, or populate a drop-down) are deprecated.

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

#387

Post by BoorishBears »

10000truths wrote: post #41
commandlinefan wrote: post #7

> it is fair to say this area of app development is complicated to understand. Not really, but it's also actively suppressed. If they can make as much money with a 439MB app as they can with a 10MB app, why would they waste any time or effort trying to save you a few minutes of download time? If anything, I expect this to get worse, as management is constantly pushing for adoption of frameworks that (in their imagina…

Actively suppressed by whom? Is there some shadowy cabal of executive saboteurs gleefully cackling at the idea of getting away with a bloated app? Because it’s plainly obvious that a bloated app benefits neither the consumer nor the business. It costs consumer time waiting for a large app to download, and it wastes consumer money by burning up quota on metered connections. It costs the business because apps have a si…

> Is there some shadowy cabal of executive saboteurs gleefully cackling at the idea of getting away with a bloated app?

Yes? Have you actually seen this space?

There are tons of shops that get this stuff outsourced to them.

They have executives who gleefully cackle at the idea of hiring the bottom of the barrel developers who wouldn't even know to strip symbols, and cackle at the idea of cracking whips at them so that even if they did know they wouldn't have the bandwidth to do it. All while charging hundreds of dollars per billable hour.

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

#388

Post by throwinthisaway »

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’ve worked with Chris. I wouldn’t believe a word out of his mouth.

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

#389

Post by grishka »

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…

And then there's me. I somehow manage to squeeze quite a lot of Android app into several megabytes of an apk — and that's with proguard turned off. Some people's minds get blown by this, but for me it's just sensible engineering decisions.

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

#390

Post by saagarjha »

sond813 wrote: post #306
PascLeRasc wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is it even legal to distribute San Francisco?
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