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Comment by venture_lol | Hacker News Reader

From a user perspective, you may not have to download a new app.

Different locale, different customs, regulations may dictate entire different screens.

How an "app" is designed and packaged internally to enable the business to respond quickly does not have to impact the use experience. There are plenty of design patterns and engineering experience to draw from. It's a somewhat boring topic.

I find it more interesting to find answers to question such as:

1. A native person in India will be presented with an "Indian" app, satisfying the locale, regulations, laws, culture, etc.

2. A tourist landing in India, well, er, what version should that person use? Laws, regulations still apply (well, Uber may have a different take :) ) but how about the user experience and colloquial details? Would the tourist prefer something from home or something that more accurately, and perhaps more apt for India?

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So why is this better from a user or engineering perspective than having just one app?

"There are plenty of design patterns and engineering experience to draw from. It's a somewhat boring topic."

I disagree, I think its a fascinating topic but then again I might be biased as I'm a mobile developer ;) Very few organizations have single app's that are worked on by > 50 people. I worked on the FB iOS app for several years. When an app gets that big you run into all sorts of problems that are not obvious both from an engineering and product perspective.

So to me it's pretty interesting to read about how Uber tackled these problems. Especially as it pertains to Swift which has had quite a number of performance issues and language changes.

"1. A native person in India will be presented with an "Indian" app, satisfying the locale, regulations, laws, culture, etc."

Why not have the app detect that and adapt to that user rather than having a separate app?

"2. A tourist landing in India, well, er, what version should that person use? Laws, regulations still apply (well, Uber may have a different take :) ) but how about the user experience and colloquial details? Would the tourist prefer something from home or something that more accurately, and perhaps more apt for India?"

When you land at a different airport currently uber provides a customized experience for that airport/locale. It knows that you are in a different local.

I think you two are saying the same thing. First sentence of the parent comment is:

"From a user perspective, you may not have to download a new app."

Point is that even if it isn't a separate download, in different locale's, it may be essentially a separate app with different screens and UIs.

Sorry maybe I'm misunderstanding what he originally said. I thought he meant break the uber app up into seperare sub apps.

What you describe is what uber currently does?

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