The Flash-compiled apps would not be nearly so big if Apple allowed shared libraries to be installed once and loaded dynamically, instead of forcing them to be statically linked into each and every app that uses them, thus bloating app size with redundant code.

But that's crazy talk -- it's not like iPhone OS is an Unix with several[1][2][3] well-defined and proven extension mechanisms, or anything...

[1] http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Develop...

[2] http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/CoreFou...

[3] http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/...