6 ms·

Those numbers are mostly unfair. For some reason in the iOS 10 App Store, Apple started listing the complete fat (both 32-bit and 64-bit archs) submitted .ipa s

Those numbers are mostly unfair. For some reason in the iOS 10 App Store, Apple started listing the complete fat (both 32-bit and 64-bit archs) submitted .ipa size. If you want to easily test that, clear your cellular data usage, update one of those apps (or install) and then go back to settings and see the actual bytes transferred. Also, most everyone is using Swift in some small part, so that automatically includes the standard library. Then you have some companies who switched to Realm DB away from CoreData. Or then there's a whole subset of companies that have decided they want to go all in on Javascript and have brought in the whole React Native stack with it. These apps in that list are also built by teams of 100s of engineers working at full speed. In reality, each one is its own little OS full of its own UI frameworks, testing frameworks, and nontrivial code. Trust me when I say that everyone is plenty aware of how big their footprint is getting, and no one is happy about it. Apple won't even let you submit to the store if the actual single architecture binary is over 60MB.

babesh 9y ago
It’s partly unfair and only a partial picture. Many apps post install proceed to download data. Some limit that amount of data they download but a few are indiscriminate about it. I hated the Yelp app because it seemingly did not limit how much space it took up. The more reviews you viewed, the more space it took up. I never found a setting to limit it. If you go to Manage Storage you will discover that many apps take over 100mb in documents and data.
ehsankia 9y ago
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.
- MBCook 9y ago
  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.
  - tomerv 9y ago
    I checked now. LinkedIn: 20.36MB Facebook: 76.59MB Twitter: 25.71MB That's about 1/8th the size of those apps on iOS. Those are just the first three apps in use article, I'm sure the rest are about the same.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      Wow. I wonder why it's so different. Hopefully someone can chime in with the reason.
      - johncolanduoni 9y ago
        Java byte code is generally much smaller than equivalent machine code. If you use something like Multi-OS engine which statically compiles Java bytecode to native code for iOS it's fairly typical to see an order of magnitude difference in binary size. This actually affects Android 5+ too (Multi-OS engine uses Android's AOT compiler) but since it happens on the device it doesn't affect download sizes.
        MBCook 9y ago
        Really? I've never heard that before. I'd guess it would be bigger if anything. Any idea why that is?
        unholiness 9y ago
        It's true, Java bytecode was basically designed for small size. The goal was to transmit java apps quickly over the internet, a hope which mostly died off as JS took over, but which in some ways has been reborn with android (dalvik bytecode is somewhat different but is definitely small). The main tradeoff for the small size is a total lack of optimization until the JIT compilation stage. But there's no way it's anything like a 10x difference. There's definitely something else going on here, like some quirk about how the app store is calculating the sizes of assets.
mtl_usr 9y ago
I'm as far to mobile development as I can be but is there no shared libraries on those platforms ? Other than the environment provided ones, isn't it possible to bundle some dynamically loaded libraries that can be shared by multiple apps ? Makes absolutely no sense for each application to implement it's own web browser/runtime. Can't believe we are constantly reinventing the wheel again.
- babesh 9y ago
  For iOS, there are the shared libraries provided by the OS. UIKit, PhotoKit, etc... Shared libraries beyond that would bring the hell of version incompatibility. One need only look at Apple’s evolution of Swift where there still isn’t binary compatibility? Most people don’t want to crack open their phone and set paths so that their app has a version of Python that works with it. Also shared libraries can be giant security holes. See the bug in AFNetworking that affected many thousands of apps. Imagine an errant app shipping a backdoor into a shared networking library.
  - mtl_usr 9y ago
    I guess they went as far as they could without a proper package manager. > Shared libraries beyond that would bring the hell of version incompatibility. One need only look at Apple’s evolution of Swift where there still isn’t binary compatibility? Since the source code is shared with Apple once it reaches the marketplace, wouldn't it be simpler for Apple to compile a specific version for whatever version of the Swift language is available on the target device ? It wouldn't have any market value and wouldn't drive iOS devices sales but is would certainly slim them down a little. > Also shared libraries can be giant security holes. See the bug in AFNetworking that affected many thousands of apps. Imagine an errant app shipping a backdoor into a shared networking library. This sorta makes me like iOS a bit more. Memory gets cheaper but security doesn't get any cheaper when the dependencies grow.
    - babesh 9y ago
      Your source code isn’t shared with Apple. You ship Apple a binary or intermediate code. Edit: Also doesn’t help if you have C or C++ code mixed in there.
tomphoolery 9y ago
> In reality, each one is its own little OS full of its own UI frameworks, testing frameworks, and nontrivial code. Are you talking about React Native apps here as well?

babesh 9y ago

It’s partly unfair and only a partial picture. Many apps post install proceed to download data. Some limit that amount of data they download but a few are indiscriminate about it. I hated the Yelp app because it seemingly did not limit how much space it took up. The more reviews you viewed, the more space it took up. I never found a setting to limit it. If you go to Manage Storage you will discover that many apps take over 100mb in documents and data.

ehsankia 9y ago

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.

MBCook 9y ago
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.
- tomerv 9y ago
  I checked now. LinkedIn: 20.36MB Facebook: 76.59MB Twitter: 25.71MB That's about 1/8th the size of those apps on iOS. Those are just the first three apps in use article, I'm sure the rest are about the same.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    Wow. I wonder why it's so different. Hopefully someone can chime in with the reason.
    - johncolanduoni 9y ago
      Java byte code is generally much smaller than equivalent machine code. If you use something like Multi-OS engine which statically compiles Java bytecode to native code for iOS it's fairly typical to see an order of magnitude difference in binary size. This actually affects Android 5+ too (Multi-OS engine uses Android's AOT compiler) but since it happens on the device it doesn't affect download sizes.
      - MBCook 9y ago
        Really? I've never heard that before. I'd guess it would be bigger if anything. Any idea why that is?
        unholiness 9y ago
        It's true, Java bytecode was basically designed for small size. The goal was to transmit java apps quickly over the internet, a hope which mostly died off as JS took over, but which in some ways has been reborn with android (dalvik bytecode is somewhat different but is definitely small). The main tradeoff for the small size is a total lack of optimization until the JIT compilation stage. But there's no way it's anything like a 10x difference. There's definitely something else going on here, like some quirk about how the app store is calculating the sizes of assets.

mtl_usr 9y ago

I'm as far to mobile development as I can be but is there no shared libraries on those platforms ? Other than the environment provided ones, isn't it possible to bundle some dynamically loaded libraries that can be shared by multiple apps ? Makes absolutely no sense for each application to implement it's own web browser/runtime. Can't believe we are constantly reinventing the wheel again.

babesh 9y ago
For iOS, there are the shared libraries provided by the OS. UIKit, PhotoKit, etc... Shared libraries beyond that would bring the hell of version incompatibility. One need only look at Apple’s evolution of Swift where there still isn’t binary compatibility? Most people don’t want to crack open their phone and set paths so that their app has a version of Python that works with it. Also shared libraries can be giant security holes. See the bug in AFNetworking that affected many thousands of apps. Imagine an errant app shipping a backdoor into a shared networking library.
- mtl_usr 9y ago
  I guess they went as far as they could without a proper package manager. > Shared libraries beyond that would bring the hell of version incompatibility. One need only look at Apple’s evolution of Swift where there still isn’t binary compatibility? Since the source code is shared with Apple once it reaches the marketplace, wouldn't it be simpler for Apple to compile a specific version for whatever version of the Swift language is available on the target device ? It wouldn't have any market value and wouldn't drive iOS devices sales but is would certainly slim them down a little. > Also shared libraries can be giant security holes. See the bug in AFNetworking that affected many thousands of apps. Imagine an errant app shipping a backdoor into a shared networking library. This sorta makes me like iOS a bit more. Memory gets cheaper but security doesn't get any cheaper when the dependencies grow.
  - babesh 9y ago
    Your source code isn’t shared with Apple. You ship Apple a binary or intermediate code. Edit: Also doesn’t help if you have C or C++ code mixed in there.

tomphoolery 9y ago

> In reality, each one is its own little OS full of its own UI frameworks, testing frameworks, and nontrivial code. Are you talking about React Native apps here as well?