Do universal apps mean the download size is larger than what is needed for iPhone and iPod?

Question

Enabling @ 2X and ~ ipad graphics in the application I'm working on increases the size of the application by eight megabytes. This, along with other graphics, which must be performed in triplicate, makes the application as a whole very quickly develop.

I wonder what happens when someone downloads a generic application, say, iPod touch. Do they receive the entire package, including @ 2X and ~ ipad images, which they, in fact, will not use, or is Apple repackaging the application only to send the appropriate graphics?

If this is option No. 2, are there any dangers when trying to save some space using the code to apply @ 2X images to the iPad version of the application. After all, in most cases, the @ 2X and ~ ipad assets are so close in size that it makes no sense to duplicate files.

Answer 1

Users will download the same binary if your application is universal. Apple cannot repackage the application because it cannot say whether the developer wants to use the iPad application when working on the iPhone, for example. In addition, users can download the application from iTunes and sync both iPad and iPhone.

Answer 2

The download size will be larger for everyone. The whole package will be downloaded all the time.

You can use the @ 2x graphics for the iPad by specifying the full name of the image, including @2x .

I would advise against this. They do not have the same size, and some changes in screen size can degrade quality, and sometimes speed. If you grow too much, perhaps you just need to divide the universal application into 2 target ones.

You also need to make sure that you are viewing the resulting IPA files and not the zip folder of your project or something similar. Xcode compresses PNG images before packing (using pngcrush ), and poorly optimized images can be reduced in size up to 2 times or more. The size of your App Store will be about the same as the IPA release version.

Again, perhaps something is worth converting to high-quality JPEG, rather than containing too detailed PNGs.