[minhazm]

It's not even just per country. If you fly to certain airports in certain states they have different rules that affect what the Uber app can do. Do they maintain a separate app for Washington and for New York? It gets pretty messy pretty quickly. Not only do you have to maintain these different edge cases, but you also need to maintain separate applications and all of the problems associated with that like keeping libraries and API's in sync between them.

[corin_]

I'm probably missing something obvious as I'm tired, but why does the Uber app need stuff like specific airport rules stored in it rather than pulled from their servers when needed?

Map apps let you look at any city in the world without needing all of that data inside the core app, and if you have enough data to use the Uber app wouldn't you almost certainly also be fine to have it download in the background the required info (coordinates of where pickup is or isn't allowed, specific instructions message to display, etc.) the same as it receives information about local pricing, location of available cars nearby and so on?

[TheDong]

The iOS app store prohibits downloading code at runtime, excluding some very specific circumstances.

As long as the airport rules can be stored as data, not code, then iOS would be fine with pulling them.. but at that point you have a data blob saying effectively "in country X, you can use payment Y", and you still need code that knows "payment Y means enable this section of the app and use this library"... and you can't download that library at runtime on iOS.

So my guess is that the code implementing regional rules have to be bundled with the app due to apple's restrictions, and the associated data that could be dynamically downloaded is to small to not just bundle it too.

[ameen]

Connectivity at airports is not the best - if you’re on an expensive data plan those extra MBs cost a pretty penny which might put off the customer.

You need to think about the larger picture.

[corin_]

Wouldn't it be significantly less than a MB for all the info about "how does Uber work at this airport" info to come in json or whatever? It could surely survive without downloading special airport-specific media like logos, do the airport rules require complicated heavy code on the phone?

Thinking of my experience with Uber at airports, it's generally stuff like "pickups from this terminal are only available at the west exit" (show on map - so needs coordinates and message text), or "There is a £10 airport pickup fee for all private hire vehicles here which will be added to your bill", or whatever along those lines.

But perhaps your point still stands even if it's KBs rather than MBs.

[bhupy]

It’s also the airport layout information, including doors. From most US airports, you specify your pickup point by door (Arrival E6, for example), and I think some of that information lives in the app, along with the snap points that are rendered on the map (or even just the logic). There’s usually also a specific UX when requesting the ride where it asks you to select your airline to guess which terminal and egress to set as the pick up point.

[corin_]

Why would airport layout data not be handled the same way as city layouts? Maybe effectively automatically caching airports to make up for potential bandwidth issues?

And for the specific UX, sure but isn't that just a single feature for airports in general, and the app can pull the up to date airlines/terminals data for the specific airport when needed?

[manigandham]

True, the rules data is small, which is why there's no point in not bundling it in the first place. Better to have an instant and smooth experience rather than try to save a few MBs by introducing a blocking network call before you can even interact with the app.

[viraptor]

Give the streaming of location data for cars in the area, I don't think they care much about those extra MBs. If they did, you'd get a "N cars within X km of you", not a live-ish map.

A quick summary like "extra fee for airport pickup: X, pickup location restricted to: Y, etc." should be pretty comparable.

[plorkyeran]

A live map of cars near you takes an incredibly small amount of data. Once you have the map data that'd be easily doable over a dialup connection.

[viraptor]

Yes, it's pretty small, same as description of airport rules would be.