From a user point of view, faster is better, and seeing something, even incomplete, is better than seeing nothing. So:
- If you can maintain an index file which lists this information, use that for the display and download only what you need (like your Plist idea, but probably stored in iCloud, maybe in the key/value store)
- If you have to download file info, show the user an activity indicator so they know you're still working and add items to the UI as you get them (your option A)
Changing from reloadData
to reloadRowsAtIndexPaths:
makes for better animations, so is nice to have but not required and doesn't make things faster.