3 ms·

It's hard to imagine, but some DOS apps had <100ms startup time on a 486 while coming full-featured on a 1.44MB floppy disk. I agree that your app is small and

It's hard to imagine, but some DOS apps had <100ms startup time on a 486 while coming full-featured on a 1.44MB floppy disk. I agree that your app is small and fast compared to what others are putting out there, but compared to what software engineering could do if people cared, this is still bloated and slow.

mrtksn 7y ago
Oh I did not put any effort to optimize that. I bet I can get this number lower with some lazy loading but what for? The app is loaded by the time the springboard animation ends, the user interaction isn't likely to start before that. It's a new App that I try to iterate quickly, so I prefer to keep away of added complexity that optimizations would bring. If it feels quick enough on the lowest end device that I support(which is iPhone 6s because of iOS13) it's alright. The mobile devices are very powerful these days.
- jcelerier 7y ago
  When you are used to desktop apps coming up and being useable literally in the next frame of you launching them, any interaction with mobile decices and webbpages with loading times everywhere is absolutely terrible. Makes me remember all the game consoles which would have loading time ms everywhere - it was terrible and frustrating when you were used to PCs
  - Angostura 7y ago
    > When you are used to desktop apps coming up and being useable literally in the next frame of you launching them, I’m certainly not used to that. Mobile launch times are substantially faster than desktop in my experience.
    - code_duck 7y ago
      I remember when starting Netscape took over 1 minute
  - code_duck 7y ago
    Things are very different for my iPhone 6 vs Galaxy S10.
gear54rus 7y ago
And it had 2 squares on the screen with 10 pixel letters inside them saying 'Proceed y/n'? What kind of a comparison is that? People do care, it's just they care about ease of use (not putting strain on your sanity) over some imperceptible startup time difference or space difference on hard drives that get cheaper every day.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  Nah, it was a full cashier system including a bar code scanner attached through that big printer port. I believe Circle K still uses pretty much the same UI, because that mouse-less keyboard interface can be used efficiently with one hand. Not everything needs to be pretty to work well.
tinus_hn 7y ago
A large part of the bloat is from graphics assets. The icon for most apps is many times larger than these old programs and you can’t do much about that. It’s one thing people don’t realize that happens when you get these hidpi screens.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  Many old games used vector art to compress things. I'm guessing that would also work for many app icons.
  - code_duck 7y ago
    Aren't icons already typically SVG?
code_duck 7y ago
‘Full featured’? What does that mean for 1989 compared to now?

mrtksn 7y ago

Oh I did not put any effort to optimize that. I bet I can get this number lower with some lazy loading but what for? The app is loaded by the time the springboard animation ends, the user interaction isn't likely to start before that. It's a new App that I try to iterate quickly, so I prefer to keep away of added complexity that optimizations would bring. If it feels quick enough on the lowest end device that I support(which is iPhone 6s because of iOS13) it's alright. The mobile devices are very powerful these days.

jcelerier 7y ago
When you are used to desktop apps coming up and being useable literally in the next frame of you launching them, any interaction with mobile decices and webbpages with loading times everywhere is absolutely terrible. Makes me remember all the game consoles which would have loading time ms everywhere - it was terrible and frustrating when you were used to PCs
- Angostura 7y ago
  > When you are used to desktop apps coming up and being useable literally in the next frame of you launching them, I’m certainly not used to that. Mobile launch times are substantially faster than desktop in my experience.
  - code_duck 7y ago
    I remember when starting Netscape took over 1 minute
- code_duck 7y ago
  Things are very different for my iPhone 6 vs Galaxy S10.

gear54rus 7y ago

And it had 2 squares on the screen with 10 pixel letters inside them saying 'Proceed y/n'? What kind of a comparison is that? People do care, it's just they care about ease of use (not putting strain on your sanity) over some imperceptible startup time difference or space difference on hard drives that get cheaper every day.

fxtentacle 7y ago
Nah, it was a full cashier system including a bar code scanner attached through that big printer port. I believe Circle K still uses pretty much the same UI, because that mouse-less keyboard interface can be used efficiently with one hand. Not everything needs to be pretty to work well.

tinus_hn 7y ago

A large part of the bloat is from graphics assets. The icon for most apps is many times larger than these old programs and you can’t do much about that. It’s one thing people don’t realize that happens when you get these hidpi screens.

fxtentacle 7y ago
Many old games used vector art to compress things. I'm guessing that would also work for many app icons.
- code_duck 7y ago
  Aren't icons already typically SVG?

code_duck 7y ago

‘Full featured’? What does that mean for 1989 compared to now?