This is why some global apps have different apps for different countries. It's a trade off. Would you rather have a single fat Uber app, or have to download Uber India when you arrive there?
The fact that Uber devotes engineering resources to serving the tiny 1% slice of users who care about having an app that works seamlessly across dozens of countries, at the expense of the much larger number of users with limited space on their outdated devices, is really emblematic of the Valley's out-of-whack priorities.
I would imagine that travellers are an outsized percentage of high spenders, even if they are a small portion of users.
Not all customers are equal. And if you build your app or site without knowing that you may well chase the wrong features.
For a significant majority of users, if it doesn't work well out of the gate, it's broken.
For some, Taxi works well enough and is (perceived as) licensed/trusted/reliable so they don't have a need to use Uber. Others are bit of Luddites, or mistrustful. But I guess friction of Taxi / benefits of Uber just aren't high enough :-/
(Personally, I've only ever used Uber on specific travels; for 99% of my transactions, Taxi has been easier/more reliable. Don't get me wrong, I think Taxi licensing/medalion model is outdated, the drivers have worked incentives, and cars aren't as maintained as well as they could be. But I still normally don't find a benefit in Ubering).
Finally, FWIW, even traveling within country, I've noticed significantly different screens/features/options in, say, Ottawa or Toronto airports and vicinity. So I think overall a lot more people benefit from this monolithic model than may be immediately apparent.
An app for travel should absolutely prioritize UX and ease of use as you travel, however far away your destination is.
Map apps let you look at any city in the world without needing all of that data inside the core app, and if you have enough data to use the Uber app wouldn't you almost certainly also be fine to have it download in the background the required info (coordinates of where pickup is or isn't allowed, specific instructions message to display, etc.) the same as it receives information about local pricing, location of available cars nearby and so on?
You need to think about the larger picture.
A quick summary like "extra fee for airport pickup: X, pickup location restricted to: Y, etc." should be pretty comparable.
Thinking of my experience with Uber at airports, it's generally stuff like "pickups from this terminal are only available at the west exit" (show on map - so needs coordinates and message text), or "There is a £10 airport pickup fee for all private hire vehicles here which will be added to your bill", or whatever along those lines.
But perhaps your point still stands even if it's KBs rather than MBs.
And for the specific UX, sure but isn't that just a single feature for airports in general, and the app can pull the up to date airlines/terminals data for the specific airport when needed?
As long as the airport rules can be stored as data, not code, then iOS would be fine with pulling them.. but at that point you have a data blob saying effectively "in country X, you can use payment Y", and you still need code that knows "payment Y means enable this section of the app and use this library"... and you can't download that library at runtime on iOS.
So my guess is that the code implementing regional rules have to be bundled with the app due to apple's restrictions, and the associated data that could be dynamically downloaded is to small to not just bundle it too.
Then there are 100 guys with outdated devices who use UberX once or twice a month to get back home from the pub, probably splitting the ride with their friends.
I bring in more money than the latter group of people.
Uber Pool is no longer available due to covid; but hopefully it will come back as vaccination rates go up.
Unless India? [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/08/uber-exec...
That sounds so weird to me... What do you mean cars don't have seat belts?!
I can confirm the OP's experience albeit in a different country (Mexico). In some regions, I haven't been in a single street taxi with working seat belts. Indeed, I've been in some private cars without them as well, or with more physical space for passengers than there were seat belts available.
Uber vehicles, though, have always provided those safety features. Some drivers work as both street taxi and Uber drivers (as they frequently cross into or live in regions without Uber but drive people to places that have it), so that quality assurance can trickle down in some cases. It honestly goes beyond seat belts though; a Uber car is more likely to have AC, electric windows, etc. than your average taxi, even in ridiculously hot parts of the country.
Maybe because it was in Chennai, a southern state and not in Mumbai or Delhi.
You said any.
If I have to deal with the airport’s wifi... I don’t want to depend on downloading a 100mb binary over it.
Maybe they could have a local and global version available, but that’s already making it more complicated.
That pretty much doomed all these "local Uber competitors". Nobody would start looking for a local competitor, set up an account, get 2FA, register their payment method and then have the privilege of getting a "starting up" screen telling them how and where they can get a ride. Instead they just open Uber and get where they want.
Did it? How much of Uber's usage in a random big city is from travelers based elsewhere vs locals? And it seems like others have succeeded in some narrower regions (Grab, Didi, etc.).
Uber lost in pretty much every market where they had local competition. Are there any counterexamples?
We use this for devices which don't have NFC. If the device doesn't support it, then there is no reason to download the module for identification via passport NFC scans.
It still boggles my mind that there could be ~100M meaningful instructions in a program.
When I traveled to India (pre-COVID), it was great that I could just open the app & get where I needed -- even if I wanted to travel via tuk tuk.
It was more annoying when I got to Ireland, had to figure out the app to use was MyTaxi and get it all working (including payments), particularly as a foreigner.
Do you have some examples? Genuinely curious. To my knowledge, most of the major FAANG apps are single-binary.
Why? I have no idea.
Google Pay is another one. They have a dedicate app in Singapore.
It seems like a lot of them went to single apps when they realized they could download data packs within the app. Stuff like Rick Steves guided tour apps used to be separate per city, but now it's a single app where you download the data for a certain city.
But I think you're right that all the major FAANG apps are single-binary.
Worked on iOS app size at a FAANG for a couple of years -- this is untrue. At the very least there are different binaries for watch vs iPhone architectures.
As an engineer? The first option too.