HN Explorer

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

5 points by nonstopnonsense ↗ HN
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.

7 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 25.6 ms ] thread
orbz
If I had to guess it is a react native app that hasn’t been optimized for release yet (Bitcode enabled).
nonstopnonsense
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
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.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
rman666
Surveillance requires resources.
ororroro
* 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