The Apps are Too Damn Big • Hacker News Board

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#81

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 1:25 PM UTC

Let me just say I enjoy the angst the pad-folks are encountering, once they find out their portable device is not all it was cracked up to be.

To an embedded developer, the hype about 'the desktop is dead' and 'all apps must go portable' was ludicrous. Speed, space, resolution, connectivity all suffer in the mobile environment. No amout of cool design will fix this, wishful thinking aside.

Poor developers! You have to work hard to fit into the space available. And maybe abandon wasteful tools that squander memory and cpu, in favor of tools that make you face the hard choices. Guess what? Its called software engineering, and you're supposed to have the skills to do it. Stop complaining!

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#82

Post by prof_hobart » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 1:31 PM UTC

DominikR wrote: post #66

prof_hobart wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That solves a tiny percentage of the issues on Android, whereas it resolves the majority on iOS. That's the difference.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#83

Post by olalonde » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 1:34 PM UTC

keeperofdakeys wrote: post #58

olalonde wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I thought all Android apps ran in a Dalvik VM. What do you mean by "could be used for different ARM architectures"? Isn't Java bytecode independent of the underlying architecture?

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#84

Post by jiggy2011 » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 1:39 PM UTC

On the iPad is it possible to download an app and somehow cache it onto some other storage medium (i.e a PC or Mac HDD) so you can uninstall it, backup all your personal files and then sync it back over later (via LAN or USB)?

I ask because I was thinking of getting an iPad3 in the near future and was tempted to get the 16 GB model because I have many TBs of storage elsewhere on my PC/NAS/Servers so I'm not going to use it to archive anything long term. Plus an extra £70 for 16GB seems steep when I could get a 64GB SSD for the same.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#85

Post by bjxrn » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 2:02 PM UTC

yusefnapora wrote: post #67

bjxrn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That is unfortunate.

I see people suggesting going with SVG or resizing a high resolution image, but there was a good post not long ago about the problem with SVG and blindly resizing. You really need your images tweaked on a per-size basis.

I can imagine you can get away with automatically resizing iPad HD -> iPad, but going down to the relatively tiny sizes for the smaller screens would be a bad idea IMO.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#86

Post by smashing » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 2:16 PM UTC

pmjordan wrote: post #75

smashing wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, we have less than 4 pagefuls of apps on our (admittedly 16GB) 1st-gen iPad, and space is pretty tight. No music and we only keep around about 1-3 hours of video at a time. 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)…

Whenever someone comes at me with this topic, I can't help but think of the greatest George Carlin quote of all time, "Simplify."

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#87

Post by smashing » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 2:18 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #80

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…

> 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. 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…

This comment is brilliantly introspective into the culture of Apple and in the benefits of leaving behind obsolescence.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#88

Post by noonat » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 2:37 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #84

On the iPad is it possible to download an app and somehow cache it onto some other storage medium (i.e a PC or Mac HDD) so you can uninstall it, backup all your personal files and then sync it back over later (via LAN or USB)? I ask because I was thinking of getting an iPad3 in the near future and was tempted to get the 16 GB model because I have many TBs of storage elsewhere on my PC/NAS/Servers so I'm not going to…

Yes. iTunes on your desktop machine can store (and update) apps that you are not currently syncing to the device. Then, when syncing the iPad, you can check a box in iTunes to indicate that the app should be included on the device.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#89

Post by hrktb » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 2:41 PM UTC

tolmasky wrote: post #30

I don't understand why "universal binaries" exist at all on iOS. On desktops where the app space is more "free" it has a purpose, but it's not like users are regularly moving apps from one iDevice to another -- so what on earth is the point of having three different things altogether? The much more intelligent solution would have been to simply allow developers to upload 3 different binaries, but only present it as o…

I see your point, but users don't need to be moving apps from one device to the other. They just need to DL it on one and have it delivered to others, which is standard icloud procedure now. It's the same for backups, especially for apps that you want a copy nevermind what happens down the way (the app is deleted, the news version is crap, you can't connect to the store etc).

As a matter of price, for the reasons above I am OK to pay more for an universal app than have two different ones I'll have to manage separately.

Re: The Apps are Too Damn Big

#90

Post by nkoren » Sun, Apr 08, 2012, 2:44 PM UTC

sehugg wrote: post #13

cbsmith wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only things were done with vector graphics...

Might not be so easy. http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-...

I skimmed the article to get the tl;dr, which seems to be that there is an appropriate level of detail (LOD) for icons of different sizes, and that therefore vector graphics won't work.

True, and false. All you would need is a vector graphics format with a per-element LOD specification. Here's an example of one format and editor which does that:

http://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/applications/icon-...