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I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

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Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#31

Post by stingraycharles »

mojuba wrote: post #5

But even the stripped version is way way too much for an app like this. I can imagine it's layers upon layers of poor, bad and terrible architectural and organizational decisions.

I’d like to approach this differently, and think about what it would have cost United Airlines to do it “the right way”, versus what value it brings them.

I’m the first to say that this utter bloat is terrible, but most people aren’t really bothered by it. And I can only imagine that they outsourced their app development completely and like to keep costs low.

From that perspective, it’s probably much more pragmatic to fix the problem at the root(s): Apple may want to mandate stripped binaries (I think this is also what RPM does by default, just strip everything), and/or god forbid these Electron-type frameworks should make things more efficient.

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#32

Post by memco »

Scoundreller wrote: post #10
jeffbee wrote: post #3

This is the kind of thing the App Store review process should be flagging.

Why? Bloat drives sales and upgrades.

So does optimization and efficiency. Apple can add this in at some point and say they reduced App sizes by X% across the entire App Store at WWDC and get lots of oohs and aahs.

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#33

Post by psanford »

commandlinefan wrote: post #7

> it is fair to say this area of app development is complicated to understand. Not really, but it's also actively suppressed. If they can make as much money with a 439MB app as they can with a 10MB app, why would they waste any time or effort trying to save you a few minutes of download time? If anything, I expect this to get worse, as management is constantly pushing for adoption of frameworks that (in their imagina…

The size of the app is hurting their on-boarding funnel, they just can't see it. The most likely place you are going to download the United App is in the airport just before your flight, on mediocre free wifi.

United really wants that download to be fast, so customers can get the app before getting on the plane. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of grumpy people your that your flight attendants have to deal with.

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#35

Post by mlindner »

abotsis wrote: post #21

I wonder what effect stripping has on crash dump reports though. I don’t know enough about how the App Store manages those, like (if a user opts in to “share information with the developer”), does the developer get less nice dumps as a result of stripping? Surely this can be worked around so long as someone has a symbol table (which they likely do), but the infrastructure might not be in place to do that automaticall…

A good crash dump doesn't need symbols at all. The symbols come from the stored symbols from when the author originally compiled it. As long as the builds are reproducible you can even produce the symbols at a later date for an old version if you still have the source code.

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#36

Post by chrisseaton »

mojuba wrote: post #5

But even the stripped version is way way too much for an app like this. I can imagine it's layers upon layers of poor, bad and terrible architectural and organizational decisions.

> I can imagine it's layers upon layers of poor, bad and terrible architectural and organizational decisions.

Or are they trade-offs?

Do these 'bad decisions' actually impact their business or are they manageable, allowing them to achieve their mission, focusing on other things that are more important?

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#38

Post by commandlinefan »

digikata wrote: post #26
commandlinefan wrote: post #7

> it is fair to say this area of app development is complicated to understand. Not really, but it's also actively suppressed. If they can make as much money with a 439MB app as they can with a 10MB app, why would they waste any time or effort trying to save you a few minutes of download time? If anything, I expect this to get worse, as management is constantly pushing for adoption of frameworks that (in their imagina…

They spend a lot of money trying to offer competitive features on their flights - like maybe watching streaming videos on the plane enabled by the app. To the extent that passengers can't finish a 439MB download of the app just before they board, the app size wastes investments in services of the airline.

You're thinking like an engineer, not a manager. How does this factor into this year's bonus?

Re: I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app

#40

Post by Symbiote »

commandlinefan wrote: post #7

> it is fair to say this area of app development is complicated to understand. Not really, but it's also actively suppressed. If they can make as much money with a 439MB app as they can with a 10MB app, why would they waste any time or effort trying to save you a few minutes of download time? If anything, I expect this to get worse, as management is constantly pushing for adoption of frameworks that (in their imagina…

Looking through the old texts I have from my phone provider, it would cost me €4 to download even 10MB over roaming data if I was in the USA ("Welcome to USA ... data is €0.40/MB"). That might be worthwhile in some cases.

If I'd perhaps been connecting from a different country with United flights, there's no way I'd download it over roaming data "Welcome to Jamaica ... data is €3.05/MB".

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