Live data from Hacker News

Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

twitter.com

41–50 of 247 posts

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#41
post #11

My question is: why do an Oral-B app and a Colgate app even exist?

To collect data so they can do marketing and advertising to customers.

And charge them more, maybe sell some of their personal data too

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#42
post #24

https://xcancel.com/emergetools/status/1828490449881047401

This is the worst Twitter proxy I've ever seen. It's got one of those idiotic "wait x seconds to view this page" and then a "reload the page". It's like a spam interstitial you get when you're trying to view illegal streams. I can't believe anyone not affiliated with it would post it. Awful tool.

I never heard of this proxy before this post.

the interstitial only seemed to appear on first load, and didn't take very many seconds..

the interface is clean and allows me to see the entire thread without being logged in, unlike x..

I had to log out of X to test this, but I can see the utility, and am not understanding the hate.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#43
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s insane. They should absolutely, 100% be pulled on demand.

Why? Is it not okay to ship them directly?

How many toothbrush models do you think the average person who downloads this app owns?

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#44
post #24

https://xcancel.com/emergetools/status/1828490449881047401

This is the worst Twitter proxy I've ever seen. It's got one of those idiotic "wait x seconds to view this page" and then a "reload the page". It's like a spam interstitial you get when you're trying to view illegal streams. I can't believe anyone not affiliated with it would post it. Awful tool.

I wonder who's to blame for that.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#45
post #11

My question is: why do an Oral-B app and a Colgate app even exist?

The same reason they now have a toothbrush with AI. Because they are in a race to continuously re-invent the toothbrush every year to create new USPs, create new marketing angles and keep sales high.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#46
post #6

The real question is why do toothbrushes need apps in the first place?

Because it's cool man! BTW, I stayed over at a friend's place one time, and he donated me a new electric tooth brush. How can people even use this? I found it extremely hurtful on my teeth. I would not use it if you paid me.

Not to be that guy, but you may be using it wrong, or it's a really cheap and not particularly well made tooth brush. I can't even imagine how it would hurt your teeth, it's just a tooth brush with small circular motions in the brush head.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#47
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s insane. They should absolutely, 100% be pulled on demand.

They should just be made properly - a properly made PDF is less than a megabyte, and model pictures should be just hundreds of KB. Takes a lot of models and instructions to burn hundreds of megs that way.

Eh, I disagree. High res images are big no matter what way you cut it, and my mobile resolution is 2550x1800 - I don’t mind the detail. But I don’t need that detail for 15 different toothbrush models.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#48
post #6

The real question is why do toothbrushes need apps in the first place?

To collect as much customer data as possible, to (hopefully) anonymize it and bundle it to sell them to data brokers and extract more money from their customer base... All of it with their "consent" (you installed the app and likely accepted their ToS/PIvacy Policy), under the pretense of providing them a service like counting the time/frequency of your interaction with the product or reminding you to use it (somethi…

Or less cynically¹, people just want to track how well they're brushing their teeth between visits to the dentist. Same reason we track our water intake, calorie intake, heart rate, exercise, menstrual cycles, etc. when we could just use analog tools to do the same thing (or not track it at all).

¹ I'm not suggesting these particular companies aren't selling customer data.

Re: Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app even bigger..?

#50
post #12

More embarrassing than the size itself is that it is supposedly required to change the mode of the toothbrush. I truly do not think this should be allowed, but I’m not sure how to approach enforcing it.

I guess it depends on which one you have and what mode you want to change, but I have the Oral-B Pro 5000, and have been able to change cleaning modes ("Daily Clean", "Sensitive", etc) and the color of the LED at the tip without the app. The display shows a timer for cleaning time which is all the tracking I need from a toothbrush.

There could be other modes that aren't accessible from the buttons, but none that I'm aware of.

Post reply on HN