71–80 of 129 posts
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If only things were done with vector graphics...
Might not be so easy. http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-...
Most apps' size can be halved this way: http://imageoptim.com/tweetbot.html
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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.
Google Play supports this, which is mainly used for tablet vs phone, but could be used for different ARM architectures.. http://developer.android.com/guide/market/publishing/multipl...
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It would require no extra work on the developer's part. The 4 binaries could just be bundled in a "super" bundle and still even look like one thing and keep the ".app" extension. So we could actually keep everything as it is (code and resource wise), then when you hit compile, it simply makes 4 copies: 1 for iPhone (non-retina) which includes the .xibs for iPhone and non-HD images, one for iPhone HD (same but with HD…
I suspect that the real problem is that some people download every app that interests them with the words FREE and LITE in the title.
Games are by far the worst of course, but I'm sure part of that is down to the higher-res textures for iPad2/3 which are useless on the first iPad's much weaker GPU. (the difference is likely even worse between iPhone4S and iPhone 3GS or older) Adding a higher-res mip level for each texture in a game will increase the size of all textures by about 155%[1]. So in principle a 16GB/32GB non-retina iPad could store at least as many apps as a 32GB/64GB retina one, respectively. (not counting savings from losing all the iPhone/iPod touch assets, which will be big for non-OpenGL apps)
The iOS app update mechanism is also pretty broken when you're low on disk space: to update large apps, you have to delete the old version (deleting any of your data in said app) and reinstall with the new one, if both of them don't fit side-by-side on your device.
And as an app developer I'm already so used to jumping through ridiculous hoops to get apps onto the app store, so tagging files for different device types seems straightforward enough (and would help a LOT for reducing the size of one of the apps in the store that I developed - in fact, pushing it below the 3G threshold vs the current wifi-only size).
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…
Can't you do some sort of custom image compression? Bundle app with the highest resolution images, then scale them down, arithmetically subtract from the respective image and pack and ship the difference. Just gzip or paq it, and see what the savings are like. If it works (and my gut feeling is that it would), then reconstruct lo-res images on the fly when they are needed.
I like this author's thoughts, and there are some creative solutions offered by him and the commenters there on how to thin the assets. However, I would be interested to see how the assets' size stacks up against the actual binary. Some of the biggest apps on my iPhone are iBooks (57.9MB) and Nook (51.3MB). I doubt their pretty little icons take up the lion's share of that size. I mean, Kindle does it in a measly 23.…
You'd be surprised: the assets take up about 50% of the total. It's simple enough to examine the contents of an IPA file: iBooks used to be under 20MB. Over time it's expanded to its current size of 50.8MB when it's uncompressed (the extra space it's taking up on your device is probably the books themselves). The vast majority of that is images. Apple have at least been somewhat smart about it, choosing in certain ca…
From one app developer to another, if you're adding retina assets for the new iPad like me, remember to use ImageAlpha first!
P.S. If you're unsure of its advantages, check out this case study of ImageAlpha + ImageOptim used on Tweetbot: http://imageoptim.com/tweetbot.html
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…
We're currently seeing around one new iPhone and one new iPad coming out of Apple each year, though. Don't forget iPod Touch, by the way. Sometimes they come with new features not available to older devices. They get released with three different storage capacities, and only some of your users will have 3G/4G on their iPads. The point is that in a year or two this is going to be a worse situation even for iOS devices. It's reasonable to assume that Android fragmentation will also get worse.
Where does that leave us? Well, I think Android is taking an interesting approach. A couple of the things in the Android SDK that help deal with fragmentation: - Standard UI components (eg. Action Bar for actions/navigation, Fragments for generic slices of UI, Layouts for providing guidance on how Fragments are to be arranged on different devices and screen orientations) - They provide a support library that can be bundled with apps using features from newer OS versions so that the new features also work on devices running older versions.
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…
Why would they run into these realities now? Apple's been around just as long as Microsoft, and they have been pissing off their customer base with poor backwards compatibility the whole time. The scale is much larger now, I'll give you that, but the relentless forward-thinking is what has allowed Apple to get into the dominant position they are in now. Microsoft by contrast, got bogged down with the enterprise where large IT departments put them between a rock and a hard place by refusing to upgrade if they didn't support whatever byzantine legacy application infrastructure they were running. Even to this day where Microsoft realizes they need innovation, they are still forced to hedge their bets with this hybrid Windows 8 Metro crap.
Mark my words, this problem of app size is a tempest in a teapot. Given current trends, most iPads will be 3rd gen within a year, and in a couple years, the first iPad will fall off the iOS upgrade cycle. For every customer that Apple loses because they demand backward compatibility, they'll gain ten with the latest new shiny.
The reason Apple will not do anything this problem is not out of planned obsolescence or greed. All else being equal they would be happy for you to have unlimited space on your iPad. But to solve it is non-trivial and does not push their product forward. To the contrary, it adds complexity that will inevitably slow their product development, which runs directly contrary to their modus operandi.