4 ms·

This is not the most relevant tradeoff. The United App is the only way to watch in-flight entertainment on many United Flights (esp. on newer planes without sea

This is not the most relevant tradeoff. The United App is the only way to watch in-flight entertainment on many United Flights (esp. on newer planes without seatback screens). Every time I fly United, they make an announcement that says "Make sure to download the app before we take off because you can't do it once we're in the air!" and then I see everyone whip out their phones and tablets. Usually that's 10m or so before we lose cell reception and it's often not enough time to fully download the app. I've often thought that they either need to cache the app locally on the plane itself or provide a special free passthrough on the in-flight wifi, but so far they haven't provided either. In any case, app size is crucially important for the key use case that many (most?) people use the United App.

bluedino 5y ago
> I've often thought that they either need to cache the app locally It's not that simple, but it makes total sense to cache a 500MB app when they have a couple TB (?) of videos on the plan.
hadlock 5y ago
Also the only way to order adult beverages
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Wait you can't order alcohol without their beast of an app? I haven't flown anythign but SW in a while (rewards card)
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    They eliminated flight attendants taking payments.
  - hadlock 5y ago
    Most airlines won't let you order adult beverages in economy, certain United flights (SFO to IAD (D.C.)) appear to be an exception. But yes. And you need to re-fill in, manually your flight info and seat number. It's a whole process. This is after connecting to their in-flight wifi, which has it's own hurdles.
eppsilon 5y ago
Maybe Apple could provide some way to cache apps on a local network without needing a Mac. (macOS has a content caching option in the Sharing prefpane.) They could add the same thing to iOS/tvOS to make it cheaper and more widely available. Ideally there would be a containerized version of the service that could run on any Linux-ish device...can't imagine Apple doing that though.
- ratww 5y ago
  But this company can't even be bothered to even strip symbols. Having Apple allow caching + putting this in every single airplane is a way more difficult (and certainly more costly than spending 5 minutes stripping symbols and other things). Maybe we as an industry should start doing the boring parts instead of jumping into shiny tasks that take 10x, 100x, 1000x the time it would take to solve the original issue...
- ksec 5y ago
  The caching on works on the download, you still need a connection for verification. So it wouldn't work.

bluedino 5y ago

> I've often thought that they either need to cache the app locally It's not that simple, but it makes total sense to cache a 500MB app when they have a couple TB (?) of videos on the plan.

hadlock 5y ago

Also the only way to order adult beverages

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Wait you can't order alcohol without their beast of an app? I haven't flown anythign but SW in a while (rewards card)
- tedunangst 5y ago
  They eliminated flight attendants taking payments.
- hadlock 5y ago
  Most airlines won't let you order adult beverages in economy, certain United flights (SFO to IAD (D.C.)) appear to be an exception. But yes. And you need to re-fill in, manually your flight info and seat number. It's a whole process. This is after connecting to their in-flight wifi, which has it's own hurdles.

eppsilon 5y ago

Maybe Apple could provide some way to cache apps on a local network without needing a Mac. (macOS has a content caching option in the Sharing prefpane.) They could add the same thing to iOS/tvOS to make it cheaper and more widely available. Ideally there would be a containerized version of the service that could run on any Linux-ish device...can't imagine Apple doing that though.

ratww 5y ago
But this company can't even be bothered to even strip symbols. Having Apple allow caching + putting this in every single airplane is a way more difficult (and certainly more costly than spending 5 minutes stripping symbols and other things). Maybe we as an industry should start doing the boring parts instead of jumping into shiny tasks that take 10x, 100x, 1000x the time it would take to solve the original issue...
ksec 5y ago
The caching on works on the download, you still need a connection for verification. So it wouldn't work.