[Zev]

Re: 2:

While its great to have a small image that doesn't require much I/O to read, "small" shouldn't only refer to file size.

Instead, a "small" image should be one that has a small resolution, and is stretchable. This lets the GPU tile the portions of the image that are being stretched and reuse GPU memory, instead of having to waste space in ram to hold duplicate pixel data.

(And when something's as small as it can be, it doesn't minify very well anymore -- not much left to strip from the PNG.)

[zmitri]

I was referring to actual images used or featured in the table cell, not tiled backgrounds via UIColor colorWithPatternImage like you mentioning. But yes, it is important to do that as well.