Do we know if there is still a cap on download sizes for apps and podcasts for the new LTE iPhone?
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iOS 6: OTA Size Limit for LTE?
- Thread starter FelixDerKater
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50Mb on my iphone 4s so seems correct.
Why have this limit?
Specifically with LTE, it's 5-10 second download.
And help protect users.
Most people don't pay attention to the size of an app. What happens if they use there whole 300mb plan for a month on one download
Most people don't pay attention to the size of an app. What happens if they use there whole 300mb plan for a month on one download
That limitation doesn't make sense to me. You can still bring up, for example, a web page with 100 MB of images on the page and it'll download them all without prompting you. You can still load a 500 MB video, no questions asked. It's just an arbitrary limitation for app downloads.
This might make sense: I've noticed a lot of people don't update their apps regularly. Often you'll find people with 10+ apps pending to be updated. And a lot of people don't connect to WiFi even when free WiFi is around, they just leave it on 3G/4G.
With that said, if they hit 'Update All', then among the 10+ apps might be an app that is a huge update and would eat up a significant amount of their data. In this case, they would unknowingly be spending their mobile data.
When someone goes to watch a video or stream music, they are knowingly spending the data.
The whole idea of a limit on apps updating - it's part protecting the customer, and part protecting themselves from taking the blame on overages etc.
Mad Mac Maniac
macrumors 601
Not to mention the fact that each update redownloads the whole thing (although this may be fixed in iOS6?) Looking at my app size on my iPhone, if my largest 6 apps had updates waiting, that would be 8.3GB!!! That is absolutely insane. Those are 5 games and one GPS app. Rage HD itself is 2.0GB.
Even with my "unlimited" at&t data plan, I would get throttled after the first 5gb. I've been considering not even using my home wifi, because I'm guessing LTE is faster, but I'll probably go ahead and use my wifi on my iPhone at least to do my weekly app updates, if nothing else.
Yeah, the arbitrary nature of it is silly. I tried to download the latest The Verge podcast the other day, and hit the 50mb limit. I streamed it instead, which took up exactly the same bandwidth, and then found that the Podcasts app marked it as "downloaded".
Same thing happened to me before with a Hypercritical podcast that I wanted to listen to on the go. I couldn't download it from iTunes because it was over 50 MB, but I could go to 5by5.tv in Safari and stream the whole thing in no time. It is silly, for sure.
Regarding app downloads, rather than just denying the download, I think Apple could create a better solution by providing a double-confirmation pop-up that lets you know exactly how many MB you are about to use before continuing, especially if you're in the 50-500 MB range and not up in the GB's. The 2nd "are you sure?" pop-up could have a bright red button for "Download Anyway".
Delta updates almost completely solve this issue. There are few apps that are large enough to cause you to use Wi-fi.