Why are WP apps so light in size?

[Jrexxx]

Not that I'm complaining but I would like to understand how and why it is that most apps are smaller in size compared to their iOS counterparts. For example:
Whatsapp :2mb vs 9.5mb,
IMDB: 1mb vs 10.5mb,
Facebook: 1mb vs 10.5mb.
These are the most popular ones, but there are a lot of other examples. Plus, how come there are apps that are <1mb?
I don't know if this the right place to ask this question, I figured that general discussion fits everything...

 

[bear_lx]

im not a developer but i would think this stems from the same reason why our specs are lower too.. the OS doesnt need it. the way the apps are developed specifically for this
OS, doesnt require them to be as big.

 

[rbrunner]

Artwork, in part

I would guess that a lot of the larger app file sizes in iOS and Android is due to more and larger artwork (pictures, backgrounds, icons): iOS apps probably already include artwork for the retina display of the iPhone 4 which is around 4 times as large as artwork for the original iPhone resolution.

Android applications might contain artwork for even more display size/display resolution combinations - Android hardware varies a lot.

As a developer, and as a quite old one already, I sometimes ask myself the question how on earth a simple WP7 app can amount to a megabyte. A full million bytes! Some calls of the WP7 API, some XAML for a page or two, a handful of icons (but PNG, with compression), and that fills a full megabyte?

Try to count from 1 to a million to get some respect of that number back

 

[manicottiK]

Not all apps are "a page or two" -- the one that we released (DrexelOne) has 33 XAML pages. We're up to 1.45 MB. The Android and BlackBerry builds are smaller, but do less right now. The iOS build does a bit less, but is a larger package.

If I subtract our images, we're at 800 KB.

 

[canesfan625]

It's because when you submit your app to the store and they approve it they add DRM. It actually is an issue that iOS devs have been talking about.

ipas are essentially zip files. What happens is when crapple adds their encryption you loose your compression. The average increase is 4 - 5 mb

 

[inteller]

since WP7 has a common runtime environment most of the plumbing is already on the phone, it doesn't need to be packaged up.

 

[Jrexxx]

since WP7 has a common runtime environment most of the plumbing is already on the phone, it doesn't need to be packaged up.

That's how I tried to explain it to myself
@Canesfan625, how are .ipas DRMed? I remember opening the Whatsapp ipa and changing a .plist file so that it would work on my ipad. Doesn't that mean that they are not DRMed?
Btw, I'm not a developer or anything like that, just asking...

 

[ninjaap]

That's a great question, Jrexxx. Now I want to know too!

 

[canesfan625]

That's how I tried to explain it to myself
@Canesfan625, how are .ipas DRMed? I remember opening the Whatsapp ipa and changing a .plist file so that it would work on my ipad. Doesn't that mean that they are not DRMed?
Btw, I'm not a developer or anything like that, just asking...

They use their fairpay DRM. You can open drm'd ipa files all day long but using them comes down to public/private keys and apples servers.