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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

#181

Post by ryanlol »

Marsymars wrote: post #175
ryanlol wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Then there are 100 guys with outdated devices who use UberX once or twice a month to get back home from the pub, probably splitting the ride with their friends.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

I’m a bit surprised you have the time for UberLUX. When I find myself with an expense account for Uber I always go for the lowest ETA, which is rarely Uber Premium. You must be hanging out in richer places than me.

In central London it’s never much further away than the cheaper options, the cars are actually nice (S-class 90% of the time) unlike in the US.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#182

Post by ohiovr »

viscanti wrote: post #98
superkuh wrote: post #26

Uber is just a scam to launder saudi blood money through softbank. There is zero chance that human driven cars will go away. And self-driving cars cannot drive on roads with human drivers. Uber is in the later stages of the scam now and have "sold" (actually, they gave 400 million USD to the company they "sold" the division too) their self driving setup. They've admitted the only business model that would make them p…

According to their public investor reports, they've been EBIDTA profitable on Rides for years. They're also profitable in more rationalized Eats markets (markets where there aren't other VC funded companies burning hundreds of millions of dollars on subsidies). What do they need self driving for?

Not exactly: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBER/financials?p=UBER

It is weird that something as exploitative as Uber can't even stay in business in the long term. Eventually profit does matter and the weak stocks will be culled in the next panic. Uber will be one of them.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#183

Post by tomasreimers »

sond813 wrote: post #59
jandrese wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me that this would be the perfect use case for loadable modules. The Uber app could download the payment module you need on the first use and leave the dozens of other APIs off your device. This could also significantly cut down on the number of updates (300MB downloads each time!) that the app needs, since NA or European users won't have to re-download the app because some Indian payment API changed. Unfo…

Google encourages this with feature modules and app bundles. Apple doesn't allow it because they've always been against downloading executable code that doesn't go through app review. Same reason they don't like game streaming or downloading react native at runtime. I'd like to see them open up this possibility in a controlled way one day. Something like a review process for feature modules that could be updated in a…

Google is also serving a different market (average of lower-end phones on lower-end networks); however, I worry that every day Google's stance on apps and app review starts to look more and more like Apple's.

WRT to Apple enabling this: I imagine developers could get into a bit of a versioning hell-scape there if they were decouple updates of different modules in their app (do you know if your app is working with FeatureA v1, v2, v3, or not at all? How about FeatureB?) If Apple were to do this it would look something like app extensions do today (separate binary stored within the IPA - that's possibly thinned out and rehydrated on device); probably with very little control over what's loaded (similar to how they did rollouts: this percent on this date and nothing else)

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#184

Post by tomasreimers »

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…

I imagine there are a few attempts.

One worth calling out (and recently written about) is server-driven UI: https://artem-tyurin.medium.com/screenflow-an-unfinished-att...

The more the can make the app a "thin-client" (effectively just taking configuration from the server on how to display components w/in a Screen), the more product code they can pull from the app.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#185

Post by sond813 »

tomasreimers wrote: post #180
sond813 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep this is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve! A lot of large app companies have switched from Xcode to third party build systems like Buck or Bazel. This can make things faster but even more confusing. I've found analyzing the actual build products to be the best solution to make sure nothing unintended is happening.

Interesting! Are you interested in going back into the build process to try and thin the app directly? Or just in helping developers identify the sources of app size?

Currently identifying sources and offering suggestions for how to make improvements. For many apps this can reveal a lot of opportunity!

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#186

Post by corin_ »

bhupy wrote: post #171
corin_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s also the airport layout information, including doors. From most US airports, you specify your pickup point by door (Arrival E6, for example), and I think some of that information lives in the app, along with the snap points that are rendered on the map (or even just the logic). There’s usually also a specific UX when requesting the ride where it asks you to select your airline to guess which terminal and egress…

Why would airport layout data not be handled the same way as city layouts? Maybe effectively automatically caching airports to make up for potential bandwidth issues?

And for the specific UX, sure but isn't that just a single feature for airports in general, and the app can pull the up to date airlines/terminals data for the specific airport when needed?

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#187

Post by manigandham »

corin_ wrote: post #126
ameen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

True, the rules data is small, which is why there's no point in not bundling it in the first place. Better to have an instant and smooth experience rather than try to save a few MBs by introducing a blocking network call before you can even interact with the app.

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#188

Post by sond813 »

tomasreimers wrote: post #183
sond813 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google encourages this with feature modules and app bundles. Apple doesn't allow it because they've always been against downloading executable code that doesn't go through app review. Same reason they don't like game streaming or downloading react native at runtime. I'd like to see them open up this possibility in a controlled way one day. Something like a review process for feature modules that could be updated in a…

Google is also serving a different market (average of lower-end phones on lower-end networks); however, I worry that every day Google's stance on apps and app review starts to look more and more like Apple's. WRT to Apple enabling this: I imagine developers could get into a bit of a versioning hell-scape there if they were decouple updates of different modules in their app (do you know if your app is working with Fea…

Interesting idea, I assume Apple would solve the versioning problem the same way Google is currently handling it. Apple is doing something like this already but there isn't too much detail other than the mention of update packages here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/reducing_you...

Re: How Uber Deals with Large iOS App Size

#189

Post by offtop5 »

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.

Au contraire, people with outdated phones are less likely to be able to afford to Ubers. Much of Uber's profit comes from people booking Ubers from airports, I've used Uber all over the world and it's absolutely amazing.
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