AppleInsider Staff
Users looking to take advantage of iOS 9 App Thinning, a suite of optimization technologies created to reduce the size of app installs, will have to wait, as Apple announced unavailability of a key component due to an iCloud bug.
In a post to its developer website on Thursday, Apple informed developers that an issue with iCloud backups prompted the deactivation of "app slicing," a technology that pares down an app's footprint by limiting stored resources to the bare essentials.
As one of App Thinning's three tentpole features, app slicing allows downloads to contain only those assets required for a particular device configuration. For example, an app running on an iPhone 5s may not need the same graphical assets as a larger-screened iPhone 6, so those files are not downloaded.
Since the iOS App Store separates assets to push out to specific devices, users are theoretically able to transport app data across different devices without trouble. However, a bug in iCloud is prohibiting app backups from restoring to other device types; from iPhone 5s to iPhone 6, for example. Instead of device-specific downloads, customers will receive full Universal app versions until the problem has been addressed in a future software update, Apple said. App evaluation tool TestFlight will continue to deliver variants to testers.
App slicing, On Demand Resources and Bitcode form a triad of space-saving iOS 9 features Apple dubbed App Thinning. In conjunction with iCloud storage and syncing, App Thinning and other technologies enable sales of lower capacity, and therefore cheaper, device variants like the 16GB iPhone 6s.
Charles Martin
Amber Neely
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17 Comments
Ok Tim it's time to hire someone to run iCloud who knows what the hell they're doing. Eddy Cue is out of his eague here (and probably has too much on his plate anyway).
Even when it was working it really didn't save much space; a whole 75MB between three apps (big ones, too) on my iPad. It's time for Apple to stop being cheap and just update the base storage to 32GB. https://david-smith.org/blog/2015/09/10/16gb-is-a-bad-user-experience/
It would be better for the article to refer to (say) 5S and 6 , as all image assets are different between those two (@2x for 5S, @3x for 6 ). @thewhitefalcon - it's clearly going to depend on the app, some have very few images etc. It's mainly going to benefit games, I suspect. Still, it's really dumb that they didn't foresee this particular issue.
Now I see how it works. Instead of downloading the full app, which contains the resources and code for an iPad, iPhone 5/5S, iPhone 6 and 6 , iCloud holds back those resources so only the ones needed are downloaded to the phone.
I learned about this the hard way yesterday, after two trips to the Genius Bar to simply get a screen replaced on my iPhone 6. Apple is quickly turning into Microsoft: so many disparate products and programs, none of which make sense, and even the Apple staff (however friendly) have no idea what they're doing. Apple stores can no longer do a simple screen replacement if your phone has iOS 9; this is because their machines haven't been sent an updated calibration program. So they just offered a replacement 6 for the price of a screen (what a waste of money). But then the new phone had iOS 8 so the rep uploaded iOS 9 from a laptop. That turned out to be 9.0.1 which means my Mac (which I brought along to do the phone restore right there, as nothing seems to work at Apple like it should), needed an update to iTunes before it could see the phone. It was also a Yosemite update, so suffice it to say, it took forever. So 90 minutes, two computer reboots, and two iPhone reboots later: my "restored" phone contains no apps. All I could do was go into iTunes and place every single app back on the phone and start over. I said f*** that and took back my broken phone. I've had it.