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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

#151

Post by viraptor »

plorkyeran wrote: post #141
viraptor wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A live map of cars near you takes an incredibly small amount of data. Once you have the map data that'd be easily doable over a dialup connection.

Yes, it's pretty small, same as description of airport rules would be.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#152

Post by ryanlol »

ForHackernews wrote: post #34
spoonjim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that it’s one app. I remember landing in Delhi from San Francisco and the Uber app worked perfectly and I was so astonished. Effectively nothing else translates seamlessly like that. Combined with the incredible quality control on the vehicles side (every car I got in India had a seatbelt, where close to 0 taxis you’d get on the street would), I knew it was a very high functioning company to execute like this.

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seamlessly across dozens of countries, at the expense of the much larger number of users with limited space on their outdated devices, is really emblematic of the Valley's out-of-whack priorities.

There’s me, a frequent traveller who uses UberLUX 4+ times a day, spending more than 5000GBP/mo.

Then there are 100 guys with outdated devices who use UberX once or twice a month to get back home from the pub, probably splitting the ride with their friends.

I bring in more money than the latter group of people.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#153

Post by spoonjim »

dliff wrote: post #115
spoonjim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that it’s one app. I remember landing in Delhi from San Francisco and the Uber app worked perfectly and I was so astonished. Effectively nothing else translates seamlessly like that. Combined with the incredible quality control on the vehicles side (every car I got in India had a seatbelt, where close to 0 taxis you’d get on the street would), I knew it was a very high functioning company to execute like this.

While I had a positive experience with the Uber app software-wise (app functioned seamlessly landing in Mumbai from U.S.A.), Uber as a service was not really comparable to what it is like in the U.S. and developed W. European countries. I got the sense that it was more of a strictly ride hailing / request service, not much accountability required from the driver. Often had > 3 drivers cancel after 10-15 minutes waiti…

Uber India isn’t like Uber New York but it’s a million times more reliable and predictable than almost any other commercial service you can get in India.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#154

Post by JimDabell »

Borlands wrote: post #100
spoonjim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that it’s one app. I remember landing in Delhi from San Francisco and the Uber app worked perfectly and I was so astonished. Effectively nothing else translates seamlessly like that. Combined with the incredible quality control on the vehicles side (every car I got in India had a seatbelt, where close to 0 taxis you’d get on the street would), I knew it was a very high functioning company to execute like this.

Exactly same experience, from San Fran to Singapore and in between. Never really realised how good we have it, such a good point

That’s no longer possible now because Uber withdrew from South-East Asia. You can use Grab and Gojek in Singapore, but they don’t operate in the USA.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#155

Post by TheDong »

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…

The iOS app store prohibits downloading code at runtime, excluding some very specific circumstances.

As long as the airport rules can be stored as data, not code, then iOS would be fine with pulling them.. but at that point you have a data blob saying effectively "in country X, you can use payment Y", and you still need code that knows "payment Y means enable this section of the app and use this library"... and you can't download that library at runtime on iOS.

So my guess is that the code implementing regional rules have to be bundled with the app due to apple's restrictions, and the associated data that could be dynamically downloaded is to small to not just bundle it too.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#156

Post by nightowl_games »

novok wrote: post #56
danpalmer wrote: post #36

I'd like to see Apple expose more control over their app thinning technologies. Currently they only deliver the binary for the device's CPU, and only the assets for the device's asset class. There's then some tech targeted at game devs for on-demand assets for things like game levels that you don't need all of on device at one time. I suspect the limitations of this are around the binary not being subject to this, bu…

Well since on demand resources were made for games (lua is specifically called out as 'ok'), I could imagine many games also making their initial size far smaller if they used binary code to make new levels or regions. Games are very large chunk of the app store and it's revenue.

Games don't really use those technologies because we want to use the same tech on Android and Apple so we typically roll our own or pay a third party BaaS. The big players probably almost always roll there own.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#157

Post by headsupftw »

jedberg wrote: post #17
bhupy wrote: post #7

An old (but fantastic) comment from the previous discussion about Uber's app size that addresses why the Uber app is so big: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346

The summary of that comment is "we have to include a ton of stuff that will never be relevant to most users like payments APIs that only work in India." This is why some global apps have different apps for different countries. It's a trade off. Would you rather have a single fat Uber app, or have to download Uber India when you arrive there?

It's not exactly a case of downloading an India version when you arrive there. In order to do so first you have to register an India App Store account. And in order to do that, you might need an India cell phone number and credit card.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#158

Post by robryan »

dliff wrote: post #115
spoonjim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that it’s one app. I remember landing in Delhi from San Francisco and the Uber app worked perfectly and I was so astonished. Effectively nothing else translates seamlessly like that. Combined with the incredible quality control on the vehicles side (every car I got in India had a seatbelt, where close to 0 taxis you’d get on the street would), I knew it was a very high functioning company to execute like this.

While I had a positive experience with the Uber app software-wise (app functioned seamlessly landing in Mumbai from U.S.A.), Uber as a service was not really comparable to what it is like in the U.S. and developed W. European countries. I got the sense that it was more of a strictly ride hailing / request service, not much accountability required from the driver. Often had > 3 drivers cancel after 10-15 minutes waiti…

Yeah my experience was that it could be a bit of a pain with cancellations but there were enough cars on the road that I would always eventually get a ride.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#159

Post by jen20 »

albedoa wrote: post #150
megablast wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another person who think the internet is available everywhere.

Do you understand why we are assuming internet availability when ordering an Uber.

Sure, but not why you are assuming it is fast or cheap.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#160

Post by jawzz »

spoonjim wrote: post #153
dliff wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I had a positive experience with the Uber app software-wise (app functioned seamlessly landing in Mumbai from U.S.A.), Uber as a service was not really comparable to what it is like in the U.S. and developed W. European countries. I got the sense that it was more of a strictly ride hailing / request service, not much accountability required from the driver. Often had > 3 drivers cancel after 10-15 minutes waiti…

Uber India isn’t like Uber New York but it’s a million times more reliable and predictable than almost any other commercial service you can get in India.

Really? Seems like it’d be more reliable and a lot faster to just hop in one of the hundred rickshaws on every street. Besides the fact that they’ll overcharge you if you’re a tourist.
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