[userbinator]

Consider graphics. If you are quadrupling the color depth, you are quadrupling the amount of memory required for graphics resources. Even more fun, if you are doubling the resolution you are quadrupling the amount of memory required for graphics resources. Going back to the olden days would only be an option if they are willing to compromise on the quality of the graphics.

I suspect a lot of this bloat is due to the current and IMHO horrible trend of "every UI element is a separate bitmap image", even if the image is trivial to generate procedurally; consider gradients, for example --- they're easily described by an equation that may take no more than a few dozen bytes of code, yet developers seem to think it requires storing a multi-MB PNG image, maybe even in multiple resolutions (smartphone apps are a particularly notable example of this).

The irony is that this wasteful technique is often combined with the "flat" UI trend, which would be even easier to generate procedurally, so we've arrived at UIs which are less featureful and yet more bloated.