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Reducing storage requirements means that one can fit more apps on the device, and that apps download and can be used faster.

• mikeash 11y ago
  Not charging outrageous prices for upgrades, and not shipping devices with ridiculously small storage, would also mean that one can fit more apps on the device. So what I'm wondering is why they're doing one but not the other.
  • s73v3r 11y ago
    I really do not care about the upgrade costs. However, doing the reduction in assets means that people using their devices in places where speeds are not great also get a benefit.
    • mikeash 11y ago
      I don't know how well that works. Your apps will be ready faster, but if they're streaming content on the fly then you'll need a relatively fast connection to avoid lots of delays while using it. With a more traditional system where you download everything up front, it will take longer but once you have it your speeds don't matter.
      • ssmoot 11y ago
        I have a PS4. Don't play very often. But one thing you notice real quick is sloppy packaging. The Binding of Isaac needs more than 200MB? Isn't it a handful of sprites and procedural levels? I've only played for... I dunno, 30 minutes, but it seems like it could have easily been a PS2 game. And then you have games with 300MB save files. Which is a huge problem since you only get 1GB of cloud storage for saves. So you end up deleting most. I care about efficiency. I like that my iPhone charges in 45 minutes unlike the multi hour charges of the ~3,000+mAh devices I've owned. I like small downloads. The Apple TV isn't going to have the power of a dedicated console. There's no reason to download 40GB of texture data.
        • mikeash 11y ago
          I agree with what you're saying overall. But this new policy from Apple doesn't seem to be encouraging efficiency. In some ways it encourages wastefulness, because once you do the work of making your assets load on demand, and as long as your stuff fits into 20GB, you don't really have to care how large they are. They'll always fit on the user's device, you don't have to worry about crowding out other apps or causing the user to receive annoying alerts about storage being full, etc., it's all just managed for you. It will be painful for people on slow connections, and expensive for people on metered connections, but getting developers to care about that is probably challenging.