Absolutely right! I left out some details to try to keep the post concise. 4 years ago at Airbnb we had the watch app problem, but now a Swift watch app wouldn’t be an issue since the latest OSs don’t require embedded Swift standard libraries. The tweet that started this thread cited the 300+mb size of Uber’s app, which looks like the current install size (not thinned), that’s why I used it as the benchmark in my explanation.
Lately Apple has been featuring size more prominently on the App Store, and it appears to be displaying the install size. This is also what users see when they look at which apps are taking up storage on their device in Settings. I think it’s important to reduce both, so users see a good number and downloads are fast/efficient. It is a very welcome change that binary encryption doesn’t negate all the gains from compression anymore. I had noticed it in the numbers but looked around for an official statement and didn’t find any, if you happen to know where this was announced I’d appreciate a link!