3 ms·

As a frequent and mostly non-loyal flier, I can say despite all its faults the United app is far and away the best airline app in the US: fast, easy to navigate

As a frequent and mostly non-loyal flier, I can say despite all its faults the United app is far and away the best airline app in the US: fast, easy to navigate, powerful, useful and often pleasantly surprising. American is the only other app that compares, I can't stand to use any other airlines' apps.

thaway2839 5y ago
One could argue that maybe the developers of the app were optimizing for the right things. Usability, performance, etc., as opposed to disk space.
- jacobr1 5y ago
  As a long time united frequent flyer, while I have many gripes, they have consistently made the app better and better without useless "redesigns for the sake for redesigns"
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  In this case, shipping symbols with the app is almost certainly an oversight. Stripping symbols of shipped binaries is standard good practice. That said, I don't think the difference between a 40MB app and a 400MB app is all that critical these days. Optimizing for development speed and user experience over an absolutely minimal download size is a reasonable choice.
  - potatolicious 5y ago
    Not to mention the surface area of the app is often larger than it appears to a single user, especially for companies this large whose customer bases are this wide. It's tempting to think about the United app as something very simple: - Search for flights - Run through the booking flow for flights - Look up existing bookings - Change existing bookings But this ignores a lot of scope that's actually critical for a company whose products are very complicated: - ID verification for international travel - Custom functionality for large institutional cu stomers (government, corporate) - Functionality for ancillary services: in-air streaming entertainment, in-airport services like lounges and baggage checks, loyalty program, loyalty-tier-specific functionality like priority connections. - ... etc. In this case the lack of stripping symbols seems like a very easy win and definitely is an example of sloppiness, but the idea that the binary should definitively be < 100MB seems to ignore a lot of scope.
  - nyanpasu64 5y ago
    Shipping a 40MB app instead of <10 MB is questionable except for large apps; Dolphin on Android emulates an entire GameCube/Wii, yet the APK is only 16 MB (34.7 MB extracted). Shipping a 400MB app is shameful.
  - raydev 5y ago
    Not just good practice, it's default with Xcode. Someone must have messed up some configuration/flags while they were breaking the frameworks up maybe?
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I have lots of apps on my iphone. If they were all half a gigabyte I would have a lot fewer apps.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    > Stripping symbols of shipped binaries is standard good practice. But please still make them available separately!
pdx_flyer 5y ago
I'd agree with you. Most of the other major US carriers is just a crappy web view shoved into an app. AA's comes to mind as possibly the worst airline app out there.

thaway2839 5y ago

One could argue that maybe the developers of the app were optimizing for the right things. Usability, performance, etc., as opposed to disk space.

jacobr1 5y ago
As a long time united frequent flyer, while I have many gripes, they have consistently made the app better and better without useless "redesigns for the sake for redesigns"
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
In this case, shipping symbols with the app is almost certainly an oversight. Stripping symbols of shipped binaries is standard good practice. That said, I don't think the difference between a 40MB app and a 400MB app is all that critical these days. Optimizing for development speed and user experience over an absolutely minimal download size is a reasonable choice.
- potatolicious 5y ago
  Not to mention the surface area of the app is often larger than it appears to a single user, especially for companies this large whose customer bases are this wide. It's tempting to think about the United app as something very simple: - Search for flights - Run through the booking flow for flights - Look up existing bookings - Change existing bookings But this ignores a lot of scope that's actually critical for a company whose products are very complicated: - ID verification for international travel - Custom functionality for large institutional cu stomers (government, corporate) - Functionality for ancillary services: in-air streaming entertainment, in-airport services like lounges and baggage checks, loyalty program, loyalty-tier-specific functionality like priority connections. - ... etc. In this case the lack of stripping symbols seems like a very easy win and definitely is an example of sloppiness, but the idea that the binary should definitively be < 100MB seems to ignore a lot of scope.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  Shipping a 40MB app instead of <10 MB is questionable except for large apps; Dolphin on Android emulates an entire GameCube/Wii, yet the APK is only 16 MB (34.7 MB extracted). Shipping a 400MB app is shameful.
- raydev 5y ago
  Not just good practice, it's default with Xcode. Someone must have messed up some configuration/flags while they were breaking the frameworks up maybe?
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I have lots of apps on my iphone. If they were all half a gigabyte I would have a lot fewer apps.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  > Stripping symbols of shipped binaries is standard good practice. But please still make them available separately!

pdx_flyer 5y ago

I'd agree with you. Most of the other major US carriers is just a crappy web view shoved into an app. AA's comes to mind as possibly the worst airline app out there.