iPhone updates and required bandwidth

Wed Aug 18 19:04:16 UTC 2010

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 13:54, JoeSox <joesox at gmail.com> wrote:

> Am I the only one that gets ticked off at the Apple iPhone update
> procedure and the amount of bandwidth it needs?
> Is there any secret I am missing to cut down on the required bandwidth
> needed for it (caching the update somewhere etc)?  I don't own an
> iPhone (DroidX user here) and am unfamiliar with the update, all I
> know is it uses tons of BW.

iOS (or iPhone OS, whatever) updates aren't simple deltas (i.e. here's the
stuff that changed) - each update is a complete copy of the device's whole
operating system. They always are a few hundred megabytes.

In theory, you could download the updates manually, extract the firmware,
and have your users pull it from your Web server, and then enter the secret
recipe into iTunes to let the customer's computer install an iOS update from
a "local" file instead of using the built-in update service. This of course
defeats the whole purpose of Apple gear, that being that it's simple and
Everything Just Works. iOS developers have to do this all the time, but most
residential folks aren't gonna.

They pay for bandwidth, and it's your job to deliver it.

David Smith
MVN.net