Making a universal vs separate apps for a massive applications
Hey everyone,
So I'm in the middle of developing this app which essentially has an interactive menu and instructional videos. Not a brand new idea I know but I can hope.
My problem is that I come from a video editing background and I'm a stickler for quality. My videos are currently at nearly a gigabyte altogether and I'm hoping to add more videos in an update later on. The thing is that they look amazing on the iPad and downrezzing the videos to half quality still leaves me with a large file size and it kills me to see the quality drop like that.
So two questions:
1. Does a massive application size turn off customers in people's experience? We're talking 1-1.5gb here.
2. I've heard Apple is getting more strict about wanting universal apps. Is trying to create separate applications with essentially the same product but different qualities a no no? I'm looking out for those 8gb iTouch users out there.
I'm not really looking for an overly technical issue about converting files. I'm doing that more directly with other developers and film editors. I'm looking for more of a general ruling here.
So I'm in the middle of developing this app which essentially has an interactive menu and instructional videos. Not a brand new idea I know but I can hope.
My problem is that I come from a video editing background and I'm a stickler for quality. My videos are currently at nearly a gigabyte altogether and I'm hoping to add more videos in an update later on. The thing is that they look amazing on the iPad and downrezzing the videos to half quality still leaves me with a large file size and it kills me to see the quality drop like that.
So two questions:
1. Does a massive application size turn off customers in people's experience? We're talking 1-1.5gb here.
2. I've heard Apple is getting more strict about wanting universal apps. Is trying to create separate applications with essentially the same product but different qualities a no no? I'm looking out for those 8gb iTouch users out there.
I'm not really looking for an overly technical issue about converting files. I'm doing that more directly with other developers and film editors. I'm looking for more of a general ruling here.
Thanks guys.
No one wants to download a 1.5GB "app". Look at how popular youtube is, they compress the hell out of videos and still get a bazillion hits for the most popular ones.
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Yes, I am that man from Nantucket
1. Does a massive application size turn off customers in people's experience? We're talking 1-1.5gb here.
For mobile apps, absolutely. Downloading that much data for an app is not going to provide a great user experience. Apple imposes size limits on 3G downloads as well, so anyone who isn't on wifi will not be able to download it. In addition, mobile users have a very short attention span. They may love your app once they have had a chance to spend some time with it, but having to wait -- for some people -- hours to download it will guarantee you will get many, many bad reviews.
If I were trying to decide whether to move forward with an app or not and the choices were to write a 1.5GB app that had to be downloaded all at once vs trying out other app ideas I had, I would almost certainly move on to other ideas. IMO, to even consider this app you need to have a well designed on-demand video download and management system in place. This way you could include 1-2 videos in the app and allow the user to download others as they need them. Or automatically start downloading videos in the background after the user launches the app. Almost any alternative approach is going to be better than a 1.5GB barrier to entry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by imademyselfup
2. I've heard Apple is getting more strict about wanting universal apps. Is trying to create separate applications with essentially the same product but different qualities a no no? I'm looking out for those 8gb iTouch users out there.
Not at all. Apple has no issues with having different binaries targeted at iPad and iPhone for the same app, as long as the UI is adapted to take advantage of the device it's running on.
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Michael Emmons
Founder, App Apps, LLC http://app-apps.com
At that size, if you make two version iPhone and iPad, or free and paid, and I get one then buy (or want it on my other device) and you make me download 1.5 GB again, I'd be pretty pissed.
Speaking just from the user perspective, if you have to package all the video's in the app, I would want the big download to be universal in case I want to download it once on iTunes, and then have a smaller version optimized for iPhone/iPod Touch.
But it would be even better if you found a solution that did not involve having the videos in the app. Does your target audience really need offline videos?
Making a universal vs separate apps for a massive applications
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