4 ms·

That is a bit sad. In most every case applications can easily shrink in size. On my ipad the other day I noticed I had several games (little more than flash j

by icefox 15y ago

That is a bit sad. In most every case applications can easily shrink in size. On my ipad the other day I noticed I had several games (little more than flash junk, not massive 3d assets) that were 300+MB in size with one at 600MB. When your silly game is using almost 1/10 of the space on my device something is wrong. Compare this to Google books which is 3MB! Props to that group for doing it right. Large downloads can mean download errors, users can cancel the download, users that forget about the app and never run it... And even 50MB assumes that they have a reasonable connection, imaging most of the world that doesn't have 3G trying to download several GB. Maybe their shouldn't be a limit, but apps should be some sort of incentive system (rewarded for small downloads and penalized otherwise?) Edit: with 4GB I could release apps that include my backups...

joejohnson 15y ago
What did you mean by "flash junk"? Are you talking about games you downloaded from the App Store?
- reitzensteinm 15y ago
  I guess he means not more complex than typical Flash games. And even they're kind of bloated.
  - icefox 15y ago
    Yup, the type of simple 2D puzzle games that you find on flash game websites.
tomkarlo 15y ago
Apples and oranges. Apps like e-readers are mostly code and have only a few images assets for icons, logos, etc. A game has a large code base, but it also can have tons and tons of image assets for textures, as well as video and audio assets. While obviously you don't have to have all of that for a great game, I don't think you can say that just because such an app is large it could easily be smaller without impacting the quality of the final experience. Look at Battlefield 3 on the consoles, where they had to use two DVDs because the texture files wouldn't fit.
- icefox 15y ago
  I would understand if Battlefield3 used up a lot of space, but when apps similar to the complexity of bejeweled are using hundreds of MB clearly the developer is just being lazy. Most apps/games on my ipad seem to be around 20MB so when there are a few that are 20 times larger they quickly get deleted. As for Google books, they clearly took the time and effort to make their download small. Even "hello world" flashlight type apps on my ipad are bigger in size. And saying their app doesn't do much as the reason is also silly (ibooks in comparison is 50MB). I single them out as they definitely did take the extra little bit of time to make their package small. Go into itunes and view your apps by size. You might be surprised what is small and what is big.

by icefox 15y ago

joejohnson 15y ago

What did you mean by "flash junk"? Are you talking about games you downloaded from the App Store?

reitzensteinm 15y ago
I guess he means not more complex than typical Flash games. And even they're kind of bloated.
- icefox 15y ago
  Yup, the type of simple 2D puzzle games that you find on flash game websites.

tomkarlo 15y ago

Apples and oranges. Apps like e-readers are mostly code and have only a few images assets for icons, logos, etc. A game has a large code base, but it also can have tons and tons of image assets for textures, as well as video and audio assets. While obviously you don't have to have all of that for a great game, I don't think you can say that just because such an app is large it could easily be smaller without impacting the quality of the final experience. Look at Battlefield 3 on the consoles, where they had to use two DVDs because the texture files wouldn't fit.

icefox 15y ago
I would understand if Battlefield3 used up a lot of space, but when apps similar to the complexity of bejeweled are using hundreds of MB clearly the developer is just being lazy. Most apps/games on my ipad seem to be around 20MB so when there are a few that are 20 times larger they quickly get deleted. As for Google books, they clearly took the time and effort to make their download small. Even "hello world" flashlight type apps on my ipad are bigger in size. And saying their app doesn't do much as the reason is also silly (ibooks in comparison is 50MB). I single them out as they definitely did take the extra little bit of time to make their package small. Go into itunes and view your apps by size. You might be surprised what is small and what is big.