App thinning concern

App Thinning and specifically On Demand Resources, sounds great but there seems to be an elephant in the room I haven't heard anyone address and that is, what about the extremely large percentage of users who don't have an always connected device? A very large percentage of iPads are not always connected to the internet, instead roaming from hotspot to hotspot, and there are even iPhone users who do the same.


If your app takes advantage of On Demand Resources then all of those people will be in a bit of trouble, which means as developers we will want to avoid that risk and instead I suspect many people will not take advantage of On Demand Resources which would be a huge shame as well.


Has Apple considered making the On Demand Resources work as an opt-in system for customers? In otherwords the developer uses it like intended, but the user themself has a global switch on their iOS device that indicates to the App Store that all apps should be fully downloaded, or use on demand loading.

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Maybe wait for the Introducing On Demand Resources session today at 4:30 before passing judgement. More details will likely come to light.


I agree that for some use cases it won't work. For example my main app is normally used out in the bush where there's no cell service. But the vast majority of users (particularly phones) do normally have always-on Internet to some degree, so it will make sense for many apps.

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While I agree it makes sense for a lot of apps, my concern is that customers will end up being against it in so many cases that developers will then just not use it, and I don't want to see that happen. A simple on/off switch for the user to decide solves the entire problem.


I am indeed looking forward to that session today, but wasn't aware of it until I watched the thinning session this morning (which was after I posted).


This mornings session actually has me even more concerned over what sounds like a lot of download, flush, re-download cycles eating into people's limited data plans. So even those with always on connections, might dislike the operation due to the fact that many phone companies treat a byte of data like the most valuable resource in the world and cost it accordingly.

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Yep. There is a bit of a disconnect between Apple's utopian Silicon Valley vision of everything in the cloud, everyone with gigabit connections and huge caps, and the real world. I doubt that's going to change any time soon.


I've been hoping Apple would just use their cash hoard to launch a constellation of low earth orbit satellites to annihilate all telecoms globally and solve that problem for everyone, once and for all 😁

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