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

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

#61

Post by nyx »

renewiltord wrote: post #34
notamy wrote: 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.

My understanding is that Nitter instances like this one, now that guest accounts don't exist anymore, depend on a pool of manually-created Twitter accounts. If the use case is people infrequently viewing the occasional tweet or thread, it's relatively easy to keep the pool of accounts healthy. If the Nitter instance is abused by scrapers or bots, its accounts will quickly be banned by Twitter itself, and the instance dies. So it's important to have anti-botting protections.

I've found that this instance works perfectly once you're past the bot wall. I'm not affiliated with it, but I use it daily and post it instead of x.com every single time I share a tweet.

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

#62

Post by layer8 »

FredPret wrote: post #58

I bought an electric toothbrush from Walmart for $6.99 probably 5 years ago. It takes Oral-B brush heads and AA batteries. It's not capable of using an app. Who know being a tech guy would make me love as-simple-as-possible "retro" devices.

That’s every other tech guy. It’s a common effect.

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

#63

Post by Beijinger »

mrweasel wrote: post #46
Beijinger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was definitely nothing fancy, but I found it hurtful. But maybe I just have sensitive teeth. I do get my teeth professionally cleaned every 6 months, but this is also nothing I look forward too.

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

#64

Post by 0x0 »

The Oral-B app was fun a few years ago when it was fairly lightweight, showed an up-to-date current world events news feed, while logging data into apple health and encouraging a brushing streak. Then they rewrote the entire app and it lost almost all of those features. I never opened the app once after the first run after the upgrade. Really makes me wish for an iOS app store that would allow installing older versions, like testflight does (up to 90 days only, unfortunately). Maybe it's time to break out a BLE sniffer... although I'm sure getting a HealthKit entitlement for a one-off unlicensed adhoc app is impossible :(

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

#65

Post by zyberzero »

0x0 wrote: post #64

The Oral-B app was fun a few years ago when it was fairly lightweight, showed an up-to-date current world events news feed, while logging data into apple health and encouraging a brushing streak. Then they rewrote the entire app and it lost almost all of those features. I never opened the app once after the first run after the upgrade. Really makes me wish for an iOS app store that would allow installing older versio…

The protocol has already been reverse engineered. I’m using Home Assistant with bluetooth and it picks up one of my neighbour’s Oral-B toothbrush…

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

#66

Post by flerchin »

barbazoo wrote: post #59
eagerpace wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does that work here? Say I have that toothbrush, the app, and say I had to sign up to use it. What they know is how long the toothbrush is on. How are they going to monetize that data?

I'd always thought that it was about any other data they can slurp from your phone. Presumably knowing your hygiene habits is valuable when correlated with your facebook activty. Just having a list of people that overspend on this type of tech and have the app installed is probably valuable.

tl;dr IDK but they don't do it without a profit motive.

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

#67

Post by joebob42 »

jakelsaunders94 wrote: post #51

Possibly a controversial opinion here but… who cares? I don’t mean this in a snarky way. If you’re an app developer you’ve got limited development time like everyone else. Most phones have at least 128gb internal memory and the app is downloaded over WiFi. I just don’t see this as a constraint. Sure you could have a CDN and lazy load but then the app doesn’t work without internet. Just dump it all on the device.

Felt the same. I agree with the whole "why is there even an app" thread, but it being 300mb doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.

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

#68

Post by lofaszvanitt »

barbazoo wrote: post #59
eagerpace wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does that work here? Say I have that toothbrush, the app, and say I had to sign up to use it. What they know is how long the toothbrush is on. How are they going to monetize that data?

Like if the average user uses it for 15 seconds, it might signal them that the existing brushes need to be wider/longer/arced, so users can clean their teeth efficiently in that timeframe.

And yeah, the usual electric toothbrushes are terrible slow since the brush heads are in the size of one teeth, instead of 3-4.

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

#69

Post by ptrrrrrrppr »

FredPret wrote: post #58

I bought an electric toothbrush from Walmart for $6.99 probably 5 years ago. It takes Oral-B brush heads and AA batteries. It's not capable of using an app. Who know being a tech guy would make me love as-simple-as-possible "retro" devices.

electric and sonic toothbrushes are completely different things. get yourself a sonic one, thank me later

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

#70

Post by axegon_ »

pif wrote: post #11

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

I asked a similar question a while back on here regarding a toothbrush with an esp inside. I think one of the answers I got captured it nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ4W7yB9Mow
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