Retina Artwork Bloats iPad Apps To More Than Double Their Size

Retina Artwork Bloats iPad Apps To More Than Double Their Size

http://www.cultofmac.com/153076/retina-artwork-bloats-ipad-apps-to-more-than-double-their-size/

 

Joe Chip:

It lists some app sizes and then says "Scary, right?"

Not really. That's why they make a 64GB model. With the music in the
cloud there will be plenty of room for apps and their data. I've
already got 13 apps larger than 300MB, five larger than 500MB, two
larger than 1.5 GB on my iPad 2. Go down to 100MB and it's 31 apps.

Still no free lunch. Yawn.

 

Oh horrors!

 

The main annoyance is for those who already have an iPad 1 or 2 (without
retina display). Or for that matter, any iPhone or iPod Touch (in the
case of universal apps).

Each time an app gets updated and adds iPad retina scale graphics, it
gets a lot bigger. This might force those with existing iPhones or older
iPads to remove some apps or data, or buy a bigger device, and those
buying the latest devices to get a higher capacity model, or be annoyed
when they discover how little they can fit on the capacity they chose. 8
GB iPhones and iPod Touches are a joke if you want to run a moderate
number of universal apps, and even a 16 GB iPad is starting to look
puny.

I had this problem with my 32 GB iPad 2 on the day of the iPad 3
announcement - I wasn't able to update all of the Apple applications I
had installed, because there wasn't enough space left on the iPad until
I got rid of some other stuff. Looking at the .ipa files in my iTunes
library, the total size of Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie and
Garageband went up from 933 MB to 2561 MB (confirmed within a small
margin by looking at Usage on the device and excluding known document
sizes).

This is wasting 1.5 GB of space on my iPad 2, and most of my third party
apps haven't been updated yet.

It would be nice if installed iOS apps could be trimmed automatically to
remove graphic resources that cannot be displayed on that particular
device.

Or if the App Store update mechanism could be told to ignore specific
updates, making it easier to keep running an older (smaller) version of
the app.

Unless either of those happens I'm going to have to be a lot more brutal
about keeping apps I only use occasionally or to demo. Garageband alone
is over 1 GB (previously 525 MB), so it will be first out.

I happened to have more free space on my iPhone 3GS, but I'll bump into
the same issue there at some point.

My next iPad and iPhone will have to double in capacity just to keep
pace with app growth. Hopefully the next generations will double
capacity at the same price points.

Android tablets with expandable storage are suddenly looking more
attractive. Or jailbreaking and pruning the files myself.

 

that would be nice, as there are many reasons why a user might not want
to update.

that breaks the codesigning so you'll need to bypass that.

 

Maybe it's time to release a 128 gig iPad.

 

This is of course where the "Cloud" will eventually come in - all your
items will be stored on Apple's / Google's / Amazon's / etc. servers and
you'll simply download the app you want when you want to use it.
Eventually you won't even have to download the app since the device itself
will become a dumb terminal and all the processing will be done on the
servers as well.

[old man voice]
When I was young we had to make do with a 1K Vic20 computer and programs
loaded from tape drives or manually typed in from magazines, which we
collected from the store after walking 50km there and 50km back through a
blizzard in our bare feet with no jacket and only half an acorn for lunch.
[/old man voice] ;o)

Helpful Harry )

 

Eventually we'll all be big brains floating in glass jars being served
by robots.

 

Uphill both ways...

 

I expect that will be part of next year's new models. The question is
whether it will cost more than the current 64 GB iPad. (The iPhone 4S
introduced a 128 GB option, but with a US$100 price premium.)

 

Uphill?!? You were lucky. We had to climb up two mountains and down a deep
ravine.

Helpful Harry )

 

I have a 16gb ipad 2 so free space is very hard to maintain but here's what I did to free some space by deleting the retina resorces. The experiment was performed on GarageBand.

Using DiskAid I was able to browse my iPad and see the garageband.app files. Then I searched for all the files that contained the string "@2x" and I deleted all of them recovering 340mb of free space. Garageband is still working.

This could be done on any installed app but not on .ipa-s because they are integrity checked.

 

I had to go to school barefoot.

OK, I merely had to take off shoes and socks and roll up pants to get to
the school bus because the land developer didn't comply with regulations
on the size of the culvert.

--
Wes Groleau

Nobody believes a theoretical analysis — except the guy who did it.
Everybody believes an experimental analysis — except the guy who did it.
— Unknown

 

Wes Groleau:

Feet? You had feet!? we couldn't afford feet.

Developer? I grew up in a coal patch. The H.C. Frick Coke Co. was our
"developer."

Culverts? You had culverts!? Until sometime in the 1980's the sewage in
my hometown ran in open trenches, some concrete lined, some not. It
flowed into a stream which fed the raw sewage into the Youghiogheny
River. I don't think that _any_ of the myriad little coal towns in SW
Pa. had sewage processing before the 1980's.

Paved roads? You had paved roads!? Don't make me cry!

 

Who said anything about paved road?
Actually, I did live on a paved road in high school,
but some in the area were not. Like the one that
attempted to remove my face and destroy my bicycle.

HA! Forty years later there are no scars and
I'm still pedaling.

Groleau, one; mountain, zero.

--
Wes Groleau

Nobody believes a theoretical analysis — except the guy who did it.
Everybody believes an experimental analysis — except the guy who did it.
— Unknown

 

Wes Groleau:

Jeez, you even had a bicycle!? With wheels and all? We had a word for
guys like you. One percenter.

Congrats. I used to be a pretty competent cyclist in Northern Virginia
and for several years in Israel, but being posted to countries where it
was not safe for an American diplomat to travel except in an armored
vehicle put an end to it. Now I live on a country road that is narrow
and that has limited site distance due to many dips and rises, and that
also lacks even the narrowest of shoulders, so I consider the road
unsafe for riding. IOW, to my regret, my riding days are over.