2 ipa files for same app (for better size and performance)

Question

I'm working on an iOS application which is developed for all devices (retina and non-retina)

The size of the app is too big now to have compromise for all devices. (Why should iphone 3gs suffer size where it does not get quality?)

Now, I would like to know if there is a way to optimize the size of game installed on the device.

Specifically, is there a way in itunes submission process where we can have additional downloadable content on the server and can download it based on the device ? We can have assets broken based on the devices and still can save some size on each device.

Answer 1

There is no way to do this thru Apple. The app isn't even necessarily downloaded to a device initially, it might be downloaded to iTunes on a computer instead and synced to the device. Also the user might download it on an iPhone, sync it to iTunes, then sync it to an iPad, so the only time it would actually be downloaded is on the iPhone. So if it didn't include the iPad resources, then the iPad would have a problem running it in this scenario.

You could always have content that the app downloads from your server upon installation, which could reduce the size, but would delay the user starting to use the app upon first run. You could also include only retina assets and generate the non-retina assets upon first run by scaling the images to half size and saving them for subsequent use. This would also take a little bit of time, although probably less time than downloading assets.

You could always break the app into iPhone and iPad versions as well, which would reduce the app size. This would also give you the ability to set a different price point for the iPad version. This is very common and can definitely help reduce app size for all users. This would also be the recommended way of handling this. Note that this means you'll have two separate versions (different app IDs) on the store. Typically people append something like "HD" to the end of the iPad version when they do this.