[benwilber0]

> their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes

How on earth is a screen recording app 250 megabytes

[pixl97]

Because developers can suck.

I work with developers in SCA/SBOM and there are countless devs that seem to work by #include 'everything'. You see crap where they include a misspelled package name and then they fix it by including the right package but not removing the wrong one!.

[PeeMcGee]

The lack of dependency awareness drives me insane. Someone imports a single method from the wrong package, which snowballs into the blind leading the blind and pinning transitive dependencies in order to deliver quick "fixes" for things we don't even use or need, which ultimately becomes 100 different kinds of nightmare that stifle any hope of agility.

[jofla_net]

and when that fails #pragma once, oh the memories!

[AndrewStephens]

>> their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes

> How on earth is a screen recording app 250 megabytes

How on earth is a screen recording app on a OS where the API to record the screen is built directly into the OS 250 megabytes?

It is extremely irresponsible to assume that your customers have infinite cheap bandwidth. In a previous life I worked with customers with remote sites (think mines or oil rigs in the middle of nowhere) where something like this would have cost them thousands of dollars per hour per computer per site.

[esalman]

> It is extremely irresponsible to assume that your customers have infinite cheap bandwidth

Judging by the price of monitor stands, I wouldn't be surprised for Apple to make such assumptions.

[dchftcs]

For a long time iOS did not have features to limit data usage on WiFi. They did introduce an option more recently for iPhone, but it seems such an option is not available to MacOS. Windows supported it as far as I could remember using it with tethering.

[JCharante]

screen studio is pretty great, it has a lot of features and includes a simple video editor

[mobilemidget]

Or.. Why on earth you need to check for updates 288x per day. It sounds and seems more like 'usage monitoring' rather than being sure that all users have the most recent bug fixes installed. What's wrong with checking for updates upon start once (and cache per day). What critical bugs or fixes could have been issued that warrant 288 update checks.

[pcthrowaway]

A 250MB download should be opt-in in the first place

[partdavid]

It sounds right, and this is the kind of thing I'd expect if developers are baking configuration into their app distribution. Like, you'd want usage rules or tracking plugins to be timely, and they didn't figure out how to check and distribute configurations in that way without a new app build.

[f1shy]

What's wrong with checking for updates upon start once (and cache per day)

For me that would also be wrong, if I cannot disable it in the configuration. I do bot want to extend startup time.

[absolutelastone]

They probably just combined all phoning home information into one. Usage monitoring includes version used, which leads to automatic update when needed (or when bugged...).

[js2]

Unpacked, it's actually 517M on disk:

   517M  ─┬ Screen Studio.app                     100%
   517M   └─┬ Contents                            100%
   284M     ├─┬ Resources                          55%
   150M     │ ├── app.asar                         29%
   133M     │ └─┬ app.asar.unpacked                26%
   117M     │   ├─┬ bin                            23%
    39M     │   │ ├── ffmpeg-darwin-arm64           8%
    26M     │   │ ├── deep-filter-arm64             5%
    11M     │   │ ├─┬ prod                          2%
  10.0M     │   │ │ └── polyrecorder-prod           2%
    11M     │   │ ├─┬ beta                          2%
  10.0M     │   │ │ └── polyrecorder-beta           2%
  10.0M     │   │ ├── hide-icons                    2%
   9.9M     │   │ ├─┬ discovery                     2%
   8.9M     │   │ │ └── polyrecorder                2%
   5.6M     │   │ └── macos-wallpaper               1%
    16M     │   └─┬ node_modules                    3%
    10M     │     ├─┬ hide-desktop-icons            2%
  10.0M     │     │ └─┬ scripts                     2%
  10.0M     │     │   └── HideIcons                 2%
   5.7M     │     └─┬ wallpaper                     1%
   5.7M     │       └─┬ source                      1%
   5.6M     │         └── macos-wallpaper           1%
   232M     └─┬ Frameworks                         45%
   231M       └─┬ Electron Framework.framework     45%
   231M         └─┬ Versions                       45%
   231M           └─┬ A                            45%
   147M             ├── Electron Framework         29%
    57M             ├─┬ Resources                  11%
  10.0M             │ ├── icudtl.dat                2%
   5.5M             │ └── resources.pak             1%
    24M             └─┬ Libraries                   5%
    15M               ├── libvk_swiftshader.dylib   3%
   6.8M               └── libGLESv2.dylib           1%

[nativeit]

Is it normal to include the Electron framework like that? Is it not also compiled with the binary? Might be a stupid question, I'm not a developer. Seems like a very, very heavy program to be doing such a straightforward function. On MacOS, I'm sure it also requires a lot of iffy permissions. I think I'd stick with the built-in screen recorder myself.

[stevage]

So looks like the app itself is about 10MB but there are multiple copies of it, a bundled ffmpeg and all kinds of crap like wallpaper?

[latexr]

As I recall, it’s an Electron app. I just checked and the current version of Google Chrome is 635 MB, with its DMG being 224 MB.

So yes, it’s insane, but easy to see where the size comes from.

[EasyMark]

firefox is only about 200MB less.

[tough]

Tauri has been a thing for a while, it baffles me people still choose Electron without a good reason to do so.

Also webapps are just great nowadays most OS support install PWA's fairly decently no?

ffs

[ericmcer]

The app itself is probably much bigger than 250mb. If it is using Electron and React/other JS library like a million other UIs just the dependencies will be almost that big.

[hi_hi]

For context, the latest iOS update is ~3.2GB, and the changelog highlights are basically 8 new emojis, some security updates, some bug fixes. It makes me want to cry.

[jcgl]

That 3.2G is some sort of compressed OS image though, right? So it’d be of a constant size relative to whatever changes or updates it brings.

[aziaziazi]

Just my hypothesis: some softwares includes video tutorial accessible offline. A short but not-compressed-high-res video can easily go big.

[256_]

It was probably written by the type of programmers who criticise programmers like me for using "unsafe" languages.

[rat9988]

You probably deserve to be criticized if you think this is the culprit.

[asmor]

"How can I make this about me and my C/C++ persecution complex?"

[lawgimenez]

I don’t use their software but if someone has they should be able to decompile it.

[iends]

It's an electron app.

[ranger_danger]

I would bet money it's electron