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How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

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Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#121

Post by ameen »

pradn wrote: post #104
gcbirzan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every car I got in India had a seatbelt That sounds so weird to me... What do you mean cars don't have seat belts?!

People have even chuckled when I reached to put a seatbelt on in India. :)

Not sure what to make of this. I’m Indian and the last time I was in India, there was strict execution of the seatbelt law and offenders were made to wait and fined heavily. Most drivers were wearing seatbelts.

Maybe because it was in Chennai, a southern state and not in Mumbai or Delhi.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#122

Post by ghaff »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #67
ForHackernews wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a non-feature for 99% of users. The fact that Uber devotes engineering resources to serving the tiny 1% slice of users who care about having an app that works seamlessly across dozens of countries, at the expense of the much larger number of users with limited space on their outdated devices, is really emblematic of the Valley's out-of-whack priorities.

Interesting assumption/perspective - The only people in my circle of friends and co-workers who use Uber, are travelers. And nobody I know has a clue of their phone storage or has hit it due to apps (as opposed to videos/photos). For some, Taxi works well enough and is (perceived as) licensed/trusted/reliable so they don't have a need to use Uber. Others are bit of Luddites, or mistrustful. But I guess friction of Ta…

I'm in the same boat. To a first approximation, I never use Uber in my local metro area. To a second approximation, I don't use it much traveling either. I'll often grab a cab if it's convenient rather than waiting for an Uber/Lyft to show up. Or if there's a good public transit option to my hotel I'll use that. In spite of (normally) 100+ days of travel per year I maybe use Uber a dozen times a year. (I do use a private car service to take me to the airport, but again Uber wouldn't be very good for that purpose.)

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#123

Post by ameen »

corin_ wrote: post #112
minhazm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even just per country. If you fly to certain airports in certain states they have different rules that affect what the Uber app can do. Do they maintain a separate app for Washington and for New York? It gets pretty messy pretty quickly. Not only do you have to maintain these different edge cases, but you also need to maintain separate applications and all of the problems associated with that like keeping li…

I'm probably missing something obvious as I'm tired, but why does the Uber app need stuff like specific airport rules stored in it rather than pulled from their servers when needed? Map apps let you look at any city in the world without needing all of that data inside the core app, and if you have enough data to use the Uber app wouldn't you almost certainly also be fine to have it download in the background the requ…

Connectivity at airports is not the best - if you’re on an expensive data plan those extra MBs cost a pretty penny which might put off the customer.

You need to think about the larger picture.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#124

Post by viraptor »

ameen wrote: post #123
corin_ wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably missing something obvious as I'm tired, but why does the Uber app need stuff like specific airport rules stored in it rather than pulled from their servers when needed? Map apps let you look at any city in the world without needing all of that data inside the core app, and if you have enough data to use the Uber app wouldn't you almost certainly also be fine to have it download in the background the requ…

Connectivity at airports is not the best - if you’re on an expensive data plan those extra MBs cost a pretty penny which might put off the customer. You need to think about the larger picture.

Give the streaming of location data for cars in the area, I don't think they care much about those extra MBs. If they did, you'd get a "N cars within X km of you", not a live-ish map.

A quick summary like "extra fee for airport pickup: X, pickup location restricted to: Y, etc." should be pretty comparable.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#125

Post by draw_down »

saagarjha wrote: post #118

This is certainly an great read, and working on it must have very interesting. That being said, in my experience things like these are invariably technical band-aids over social problems. Whenever I see things like this, often paired with statements like “there’s so many screens and feature flags”, usually the problem is not there but actually in many other processes: for example, the design team adds assets in a way…

> usually the problem is

Usually, sure. But sometimes there is a lot to do, and if I may, Uber is not your usual app. At the point where you're being very choosy about the access modifiers on your classes, you probably thought about icon assets already.

Someone elsewhere in thread linked to a partial list of concerns the app needs to cover, many of which are location-specific. You might say "well split the app by geography", but that just trades one set of problems for another, and that new set of problems could well be worse for the business overall. Paying a team of people to do this junk may be a whole lot cheaper than suffering a reduction in customer engagement when they fly to a new country and don't have the right app anymore.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#126

Post by corin_ »

ameen wrote: post #123
corin_ wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably missing something obvious as I'm tired, but why does the Uber app need stuff like specific airport rules stored in it rather than pulled from their servers when needed? Map apps let you look at any city in the world without needing all of that data inside the core app, and if you have enough data to use the Uber app wouldn't you almost certainly also be fine to have it download in the background the requ…

Connectivity at airports is not the best - if you’re on an expensive data plan those extra MBs cost a pretty penny which might put off the customer. You need to think about the larger picture.

Wouldn't it be significantly less than a MB for all the info about "how does Uber work at this airport" info to come in json or whatever? It could surely survive without downloading special airport-specific media like logos, do the airport rules require complicated heavy code on the phone?

Thinking of my experience with Uber at airports, it's generally stuff like "pickups from this terminal are only available at the west exit" (show on map - so needs coordinates and message text), or "There is a £10 airport pickup fee for all private hire vehicles here which will be added to your bill", or whatever along those lines.

But perhaps your point still stands even if it's KBs rather than MBs.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#127

Post by PudgePacket »

megablast wrote: post #106
Farbklex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google Play Store solved this problem with dynamic feature modules. Either at install time or later on, you can let users download only certain parts of the app. All with a single app store entry and app bundle. We use this for devices which don't have NFC. If the device doesn't support it, then there is no reason to download the module for identification via passport NFC scans.

Which sucks. I arrive in a new country, and need to find internet access???

Mate.. how are you going to get your uber anyway without internet?

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#128

Post by viraptor »

megablast wrote: post #106
Farbklex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google Play Store solved this problem with dynamic feature modules. Either at install time or later on, you can let users download only certain parts of the app. All with a single app store entry and app bundle. We use this for devices which don't have NFC. If the device doesn't support it, then there is no reason to download the module for identification via passport NFC scans.

Which sucks. I arrive in a new country, and need to find internet access???

If you want to use Uber afterwards... yes, you already established you'll rely on internet access.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#129

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

viktorcode wrote: post #90

> The app has a couple of millions of lines of code I wonder if Uber is planning to do anything about that? The technique described in the article (whole program instructions outlining optimisation) is a band aid style solution, merely delaying the inevitable: the code produced by numerous teams independent of each other will inevitably cross first the download size limit threshold, and later maintainability threshol…

They are already waaaay beyond the maintainability threshold.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#130

Post by deadbunny »

megablast wrote: post #106
Farbklex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google Play Store solved this problem with dynamic feature modules. Either at install time or later on, you can let users download only certain parts of the app. All with a single app store entry and app bundle. We use this for devices which don't have NFC. If the device doesn't support it, then there is no reason to download the module for identification via passport NFC scans.

Which sucks. I arrive in a new country, and need to find internet access???

How are you ordering an Uber without internet access?
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