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App sizes are out of control

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Re: App sizes are out of control

#451
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this incentive analysis is so shallow it doesn't pass first muster. does fitting/selling more apps make Apple more money? are storage and bandwidth expenses? do users value performance? most people here seem to agree more bloat = less users.

most people here seem to agree more bloat = less users I haven't seen any data in this thread to back that up. It certainly doesn't apprar true in my experience.

i think the disagreement is on what constitutes "bloat"

Re: App sizes are out of control

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want something simpler that works with GPUs it needs to be exclusively built out of triangles and/or code that can operate on a single pixel independently of its neighbors. Resolution independent formats are inherently anti-triangle and by the time you've hit triangles you already have a target resolution in mind. Or put another way, GPUs really don't like vector graphics in general. That's not what they're bu…

GPUs like vector graphics just fine; rasterizing vector graphics is literally what GPUs are designed to do. It's infinitely scalable vector graphics that they tend to dislike. Once you've subdivided your curves and such into triangles/vertices/etc., the GPU ends up being a lot happier about its existence.

GPUs are not designed for vector graphics, they are designed for triangles and triangles only. Triangles are a subset of vector graphics, but are almost never the subset that people mean when they say "vector graphics."

Specifically vector graphics typically includes curves, which GPUs just don't do at all.

Once you've tessellated a curve into triangles you've already baked in a desired resolution. You can't have resolution independent vector graphics in a GPU friendly way.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about iOS, but on Android the reason is the cost penalty of rasterizing larger icons and images on the fly. There's also some fragmentation with differing levels of SVG support on different OS levels. As a result, SVG is limited.

"some fragmentation..." That's like calling the ocean a bit wet! The experience of learning to code on Android revolves a great deal around dealing with that fragmentation.

I was specifically referring to the level of SVG support, which is constant across given OS versions, not per device like the fragmentation in old camera hardware abstraction layer implementations.

In that sense, the only reason there would be more fragmentation in SVG support on Android than iOS is that it can be harder to upgrade Android devices that did not come from Google.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#454
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, does anyone have the equivalent app sizes on Android? I'd love to see a comparison, to see if this is more of a platform issue as mentioned in a few comments, or a developer issue. I guess we also should be looking at the actual data transferred rather than the number shown on the store page.

I'm 100% willing to believe this is a universal problem and is just as bad as Android. I'd be FLOORED if Android apps were significantly smaller.

Pretty sure some android versions or phones let you delete the documents and data, whereas on iOS you have no freedom to clear the cache manually. It only happens when you run low on storage.

Re: App sizes are out of control

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a fun time with this once. The Jetbrains Toolbox app is written using Qt and is 150mb. I opend the .app package on mac, deleted the frameworks directory, and symlinked it to my system's Qt install. It's now 6mb.

And it will break at random due to API or ABI incompatibility. Have fun gluing the pieces back together.

They seem to build it against a reasonable version of Qt, I haven't updated it in a while (because it's just a launcher), and when I do I'll just re-symlink against whatever Qt is currently installed (which I do keep updated)

I understand your argument, but in this particular case things aren't volatile enough that it causes any problems, and if it does it's just as easy to solve.

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