Ask HN: Why is the threads app in Apple 260MB vs. Android's 70-odd?

5 points by nonstopnonsense 2 years ago | 6 comments

This is a very naive question. I am not a user of the app either, but was curious to know/understand why a text-based conversation app needs to be so bloated? Not necessarily questioning the size difference between the two ecosystems.

ororroro 2 years ago |

* Apple reports uncompressed app size (and uses weaker compression) +70MB * Share extensions on ios mean embedding a second app in your app +70MB * Something? else in the core executable +60MB * Smaller translation strings -30MB

orbz 2 years ago |

If I had to guess it is a react native app that hasn’t been optimized for release yet (Bitcode enabled).

nonstopnonsense 2 years ago | |

Thank you. Is that even normal/new norm? Back then when we released OS-native (read windows) code, we had to deploy without debug (assuming bitcode = debug) symbols.

orbz 2 years ago | | |

Never mind, it seems like Bitcode has been disabled awhile ago. It’s been a hot minute since I last did mobile dev.

The promise of Bitcode was you’d upload an IR artifact and not the final binary (that held every supported platform). The App Store would then compile it for every supported platform and strip out all other platform’s aspects of it to optimize size.

mindcrash 2 years ago |

Answers in this earlier post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36637295

rman666 2 years ago |

Surveillance requires resources.