How
many times has the following message flashed on your iPhone and you have felt
like someone has put a rope around you and you will have wiggle out of it?
STORAGE ALMOST FULL: You can manage your storage in Settings.
And you are left grumbling or squirming
at the screen. Life can be tough indeed and cache makes it tougher.
For those wanting to understand
this better, here is a practical example which many have to deal with. For
instance, you have an iPhone with 16GB of internal space where 4GB is already
reserved for the operating software and the plethora of iOS apps. Now with the
limited space at hand you have to manage your documents, photographs, videos
and when you run out of space your iPhone won’t allow you to snap pictures or
record videos either. All this leads to disappointing space constraints.
This problem can be tackled at the mobile app development stage itself because while
much can’t be done about the storage space taken up by the OS, the space taken
by apps can be tweaked if the mobile app developer keeps the app lightweight with
the following ways:
Understanding ‘App Thinning’
Apple’s App Distribution Guide
explains app thinning as:
The store and operating system
optimize the installation of iOS (in this case), tvOS, and watchOS apps by
tailoring app delivery to the capabilities of the user’s particular device,
with minimal footprint. This optimization, called APP THINNING, lets you create
apps that use the most device features, occupy minimum disk space, and
accommodate future updates that can be applied by Apple.
In other words, the breaking down
of code into series of code to be employed by an iOS app developer to set the segments of the codes
for the user to utilize in bits as required.
Now the three components of app
thinning which leave more space for other apps, content and bring about an
overall better app experience are:
Slicing
It is the process of creating and
delivering variants of the app bundle for different types of target devices. A
variant contains only the kind of architecture and resources that are needed
for the target device. App developers continue to develop and upload full
versions of their apps to iTunes Connect. The store will create and deliver
different variants based on the devices a respective iPhone supports. Image
resources are sliced as per their resolution and device family. Graphics
Processing Units resources are sliced in line with their device capabilities.
When the user installs an app from the App Store, an adaptation for the user’s
device is downloaded and installed.
Bitcode
Intermediate representation of a
compiled program is called a bitcode. The apps that are uploaded to iTunes
Connect (app record) that contain bitcode will be compiled and linked on the
store. Including bitcode will allow Apple to re-optimize an app’s binary in the
future without the need for the app developer to submit a new version of the
app to the store. So the developers can repeat-optimize the iOS app code
without submitting a new variant every time.
On-demand Resources
On-demand resources are those app
contents that are hosted separately from the complete app bundle on the app
store for download.
Resources such as images and sounds
are hosted by the store on Apple servers and the downloads are managed for you.
An iPhone app developers needs to tag
every resource when building the app with keywords and request in groups. These
resources enable faster downloads and lead to smaller app sizes, giving an
improved first-time launch experience.
These resources run in the
background in a transparent manner without any interference, providing the
needed features as required while the user goes about exploring the iOS app. On
carrying out the above functions, the end user will face the dilemma of
deleting their dear apps to create space a lot less frequently.
So, have you got an idea for the
next great app? Let us know about it and we will be happy to help you. Contact us or
visit Consagous Technologies.
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