On: A former Uber engineer's disaster story

[lern_too_spel]

The Android apk is 56.9 MB for my device, while the iOS app is 331.3 MB. What accounts for the 6x difference?

[_old_dude_ → lern_too_spel]

APK is now more a delivery package format than a real executable format now.

On recent Android devices, the APK wil be recompiled to machine code on the device after a small number of runs (to gather code statistics).

So you are comparing an apple and a robot.

[lern_too_spel → _old_dude_]

IPA is also a delivery package format. The big difference I am aware of is that IPA encrypts binaries, which will make them less compressible.

[saagarjha → lern_too_spel]

I assume that the constraints placed on the Android team are much higher, as that market seems like it would be much more sensitive of app sizes.

[lern_too_spel → saagarjha]

That is true, but what specifically is the iOS app getting in that extra quarter gigabyte? What couldn't they throw away to get under 200 MB at all?

[saagarjha → lern_too_spel]

I honestly have not been provided with a good answer beyond "we just didn't spent resources to do it".

[bsimpson → lern_too_spel]

Courage.

[thu2111 → lern_too_spel]

Bytecode is very compact compared to native machine code. Android converts on the fly on the device. That's at least a part of it.

[pandanomic → lern_too_spel]

Swift produces far larger binaries