

Does the App Store 20MB 3G Download Limit Matter? - stuartkhall
http://bonobolabs.com/does-the-app-store-20mb-3g-download-limit-matter/

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lt
The 3G connection from my iPhone is my primary modem at home. With an
unlimited plan and pretty good signal, it works pretty well for what I need.

The funny thing is that when I need to download something bigger than 20mb
from the App Store I have to use iTunes, which is using the tethered 3G
anyway.

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hopeless
It's very annoying to be out, find out about an interesting app, and then have
to remember to download it at home on WiFi because it's over 20MB (inevitably,
I don't remember).

Ironically, my wifi at home is just serving up a 3G signal anyway so it's all
going over the same network.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
You'd think that it would mark it as "to be downloaded later" and then when
you were back home either sync it from iTunes or prompt you to download over
WiFi.

~~~
jaredsohn
I've wanted this feature for awhile, too.

One workaround for this is to remind yourself about apps of interest by taking
a screenshot (pressing top button and home button at the same time) and
looking over your photos later when you sync with iTunes. Unfortunately, this
workaround applies more to app users than app developers.

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alttab
I have a friend that works on the iOS platform - and his first client wanted a
digital brochure for a well known luxury sedan. They paid well over six
figures for the application and because of all the assets in it, it was over
600MB.

I wonder how many downloads that prevented. What is Apple's policy with
putting a small app on the store that just downloads the rest of the content
once run?

~~~
SwaroopH
It depends on the content. IIRC, you can't download executable code – JSON is
fine.

~~~
uxp
I know many game developers that download assets (spritemaps, textures, etc)
over http. In fact, it was one of the bullet points in Apple's Optimizing game
development on iOS talk this past WWDC.

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lftl
"the size increase can be large when the binary has a lot of contagious zeros
in it."

~~~
bshep
I think what they mean is that if your decompressed binary has long chunks of
zeroes which compress really well, when it is encrypted (thanks DRM) those
long series of zeroes get changed to non-reapeating data and are no longer
easily compressible.

Usually: sizeof(compress(data)) <= sizeof(compress(encrypt(data)))

~~~
gst
You can't really compress encrypted data. If it's encrypted it looks more or
less like random data. So any encryption is very likely to result in a (minor)
size increase, when compared to the original.

~~~
bshep
That's what I was trying to say in my comment.

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n9com
Normally app sizes increase by 0.6mb after submission, but with one of our
iPad apps, the file size actually decreased after Apple did their magic.

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jawee
Is there a practical reason for the limit? I tend to _switch_ to tethering
over Verizon 3G for large downloads as it is faster than my ADSL connection. I
don't have an iPhone, but I can't imagine the benefit of a potentially slower
connection to download something.

~~~
masklinn
Prevent overloading radio networks and avoid nuking data quotas, which are
still extremely common on cell phone networks?

~~~
gcb
sms and data in the us (now that unlimited is out... Hold to that contact of
yours) are more expensive than operating hubble and transmitting said data for
the consumer.

So saying that usage is culprit to network congestion is pretty simplistic.
Only reason is lack of investment.

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gcb
The operators told them so.

Why do you think every heavy app had this limit? Skype over 3g? Forget. Itunes
is just another victim.

Why do you think only months after att cut out the option of a unlimited data
plan everyone is announcing data heavy stuff? Android even has voip now.

Expect that limit to go away next ios update.

