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The Apps are Too Damn Big

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Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#61

Post by bjxrn »

robomartin wrote: post #22

I have a feeling that Apple might just start to run into the kinds of realities MS and others have been living with for years. Either they choose to piss off millions of users of older devices or figure out how to allow for evolution without causing problems for the installed base. Or, maybe they don't. As an iDevice user I am glad that I chose to buy all my devices with the absolute max storage available. Everything…

Would it be possible to ship with 1600 files, and then delete all assets when the download is complete, or at first run? That way you have one version of your app, and are ensured that the right size gets on your client. The download will remain large, but the storage requirements will only be high a short period of time.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#63

Post by prof_hobart »

jfoster wrote: post #29

This is device fragmentation, like Android and Windows face. SVG might help in some cases. Apple's SDK should accept the best quality assets and resample for app versions for each device. Some apps will still benefit from targeting devices more specifically, though.

It's far from ideal, but it's a long way from the Android fragmentation (can't comment on Windows Phone, never been involved in dev for that).

With Android, there could be any one of dozens of resolutions (iOS has two basic resolutions, with a relatively simple 2x multiplier version of each of those), you could have a keyboard or not, you could be a device with a resistive screen with no multi-touch (or even no touchscreen at all), your OS version may dictate whether you can install on the SD card or not - or have one of many other significant differences - and the device may not be able to upgrade to a more up to date OS version, etc etc.

When we launched our app recently, we tested it on 3 different iOS versions (a 3GS, a 4S and an iPad 2), and about 20 different Android ones. I can't remember a single major issues that appeared on only one model of iOS device - and I can't think of any that have appeared in the wild either. On the other hand, we had dozens of "only occurs on Android device X with OS version Y".

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#64

Post by rimantas »

w1ntermute wrote: post #21
mcguire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, last month's devices are legacy .

Funny how that's a big problem when talking about Android devices, but with Apple it's magically a non-issue.

No, these are completely different problems. First of all statement about last month's device being legacy is false. iPhone 3GS was almost three years ago and still supports the latest version of iOS. This is the problem for Android—just compare adoption rate and share for the lastest versions of Android. Even some new Android devices just about to be realased don't support ICS.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#65

Post by prof_hobart »

w1ntermute wrote: post #21
mcguire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, last month's devices are legacy .

Funny how that's a big problem when talking about Android devices, but with Apple it's magically a non-issue.

Probably because the vast majority of apps still run fine on the legacy devices. My wife has a 3GS (almost 3 years old now), and apart from Siri and a tiny amount of high-end games, it does everything my 4S does - if a little slower, and slightly less crisply. They both have the latest OS version, and every app I have on my phone runs acceptably on hers.

Can Android say the same thing?

I agree that it's a bit of a pain having to have both the low res and high res graphics bundled in a single app version, but this issue isn't one of legacy - it's the same on a 2 year old iPad 1 as it is on a brand new iPad 3. If you've only got 16GB on it, you're possibly going to run into space issues with these new larger apps.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#66

Post by DominikR »

prof_hobart wrote: post #63
jfoster wrote: post #29

This is device fragmentation, like Android and Windows face. SVG might help in some cases. Apple's SDK should accept the best quality assets and resample for app versions for each device. Some apps will still benefit from targeting devices more specifically, though.

It's far from ideal, but it's a long way from the Android fragmentation (can't comment on Windows Phone, never been involved in dev for that). With Android, there could be any one of dozens of resolutions (iOS has two basic resolutions, with a relatively simple 2x multiplier version of each of those), you could have a keyboard or not, you could be a device with a resistive screen with no multi-touch (or even no touch…

With Android, you usually provide 3-4 different sizes of PNG/JPEG etc. It's the same on iOS.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#67

Post by yusefnapora »

bjxrn wrote: post #61
robomartin wrote: post #22

I have a feeling that Apple might just start to run into the kinds of realities MS and others have been living with for years. Either they choose to piss off millions of users of older devices or figure out how to allow for evolution without causing problems for the installed base. Or, maybe they don't. As an iDevice user I am glad that I chose to buy all my devices with the absolute max storage available. Everything…

Would it be possible to ship with 1600 files, and then delete all assets when the download is complete, or at first run? That way you have one version of your app, and are ensured that the right size gets on your client. The download will remain large, but the storage requirements will only be high a short period of time.

Nope. The assets are part of the app bundle, which can't be modified. Doing so would break the code signature (DRM).

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#68

Post by illumen »

olalonde wrote: post #55
tolmasky wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right that's the whole point of my post. I'm saying its technically possible to separate them - Apple should then do the presentation work of showing them as the same on the store and pretending they're one app.

I never owned an iDevice so I'm not sure the analogy stands but I believe the Ubuntu Software Center does something similar to what you're describing. You get the same 'app store' whatever version of Ubuntu you are running but when you install an 'app' it silently downloads the package targeted at your Ubuntu version.

Yeah, but Ubuntu is professional, well designed, and well made - by people who truly care about their users. You can't hold Apple up to the same high standards... they're just not in the same league.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#70

Post by robin_reala »

ortatherox wrote: post #48
robin_reala wrote: post #47

This doesn’t address the root problem, but liberal use of Imageoptim and ImageAlpha can drop file sizes for images by 50-60% in extreme cases. As a web guy when bandwidth matters I’m very familiar with these techniques, but maybe they haven’t got traction in the app world?

When creating iOS apps part of the process of transferring the app resources into the app itself involves compressing the images even further. There are ways to improve this, but at the base line you have it done for you.

Only using XCode’s compression, which isn’t very good. More info at: http://imageoptim.com/tweetbot.html
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