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Comment by wolvoleo | Hacker News Reader

There's a few other apps that are ridiculously big. Like the DJI Mimo app. It's an app I need for my DJI Mic, to change 4 settings on it. It needs 800MB for that which is absolutely ridiculous. Also I need to sign up for an account to use it even though the Mic works completely locally and it just changes the settings over USB.

It's absolutely fucking ridiculous to have an 800MB app for this and the reason is just marketing. It's full of stupid videos promoting their stuff. And the account just causes stupid spam. I should have returned the damn thing to be honest.

Ps pardon my french but I'm really annoyed about this and in this case it's warranted in my opinion. 800MB is ridiculous.

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I call it Marketing Driven Development, having lived through it at a previous job. It really sucks. They give engineers no time to breathe and do maintenance code changes.

Growth hacking is a polyp on the arsehole of technology, to paraphrase

First software ate the world. Then software sales ate software. Now its time for AI to eat software sales.

It doesn't inspire confidence in privacy when things are so huge, connected and opaque.

Doesn't the Mimo app work for many devices not just your mic? While your mic might not need a lot of the code, someone using one of their other devices might not need your mic's code either. I can totally see why DJI would want a single app to control any of the DJI branded devices rather than dealing with multiple app store approvals. It would also be confusing for the end user as in "Which device am I using so which app do I need to use" would be a nightmare for all involved.

Feels like we are able to build software solutions for much more challenging problems than "only download the part that the user needs instead of everything and the kitchen sink". The explanation you provided doesn't make me feel even a tiny bit better about the problem. It just details how it came to exist.

Just for the comparison, Damn Small Linux is still around 700 MB, and contains Linux kernel, desktop environment, web browser, office suite, and other software.

Mimo app will never support as many devices as Linux kernel does.

Logitech and creative do the same with bloated user apps, filled with what I assume is duplicated high res images for each device.

This would be my assumption about bloat as well. Possible to also be storing video clips so no delay from trying to stream parts of the UI.

When something is hundreds of megabytes, it is very unlikely to be mostly compiled code. A lot of that fits in each megabyte.

Yes, I have used Mimo for a separate DJI product. They also have at least two drone control apps each used by multiple models of their drones.

Corsair iCUE. 1.1GB to control your RAM lights...

Beautiful example of bloat. Bravo!

The software crisis never ended. Instead, we also gained a hardware crisis.

I just uninstalled it and Windows reported it as 3.21GB, so it was larger than I thought!

>1.1GB

>RAM lights

I'm not sure which is dumber.

That's like saying Christmas lights are dumb. Each to his or her own though!

Sounds like a ripe opportunity for someone to reverse engineer their USB protocol and create a free/open alternative.

Yes!! I was thinking of doing that myself but I don't have the chops to create an android app and no time to learn right now. But the protocol can't be that hard.

DJI lost the plot years ago unfortunately. They reeeeally wanted their app to be this whole bespoke platform experience thing and it’s been downhill ever since.

lol remember the Karma?

I did a DFU firmware update app for Jawbone once. after a bit of screwing around trying to figure out some of the reset paths we were good. and then the marketing people got involved. this was a customer touch point, and opportunity to reenforce the brand that just couldn't be ignored.

Apps like that often contain (many?) short high resolution videos to show how to do an initial connection or something that can take up a ton of space.

Gmail has no such excuse.

They could decouple the video download from the app download. Then they could even update the video independently if needed. Not everyone that downloads the app needs the videos, and even the ones that do I’m sure would be happier to reclaim the disk space after viewing them.

It’s lazy.

I often use the DJI MIMO app while out of WiFi, and would rather not download a large video separately. For the record, I do not like the DJI MIMO app (because it is the only app for their 'Pocket' products, and MIMO doesn't support tablets well), but I think this decision is a reasonable one.

I did consider this, but I'm curious: what are you doing that you need to watch a video out of internet range, that you couldn't have done while testing things out while in range? Isn't it risky trying something for the first time in the field without having already practiced it? I do understand that not all things can be anticipated.

You'd rather just keep every tutorial video in your phone's limited storage, forever?

The more likely outcome: because the app is huge, you'll uninstall it to save space. Then when there's no signal, you have no app at all.

800 MB High resolution video explaining how to connect a microphone is still bonkers. There's no justifying this garbage.

MIMO also manages many different DJI cameras (badly).

I’m not saying it’s a smart use of space. Just that it absolutely happens.

Oof.

The past year or so I've stopped buying stuff with an app before checking out how big the app is (if I plan to use it).

> I should have returned the damn thing to be honest.

If enough people actually did that, the companies would start caring.

Roborock is 900 MB just to control a robot vacuum

Logi Options+ is 500 MB to configure a few extra buttons on a keyboard or mouse. Back in the days things like these were a few kilobytes(!) control panel extension.

that is fucking rediculous! companies should be banned for such neglegence.

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