[HN Gopher] Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is ...
___________________________________________________________________
Why is the Oral-B iOS app almost 300 MB? And why is Colgate's app
even bigger..?
Author : jshchnz
Score : 194 points
Date : 2024-08-27 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| khrbrt wrote:
| Unrolled: https://unrollnow.com/status/1828490449881047401
| jshchnz wrote:
| thanks, sorry should've just posted this link instead!
| thih9 wrote:
| Not working for me
|
| > Connection failed: User 'u327838624_unroll' has exceeded the
| 'max_connections_per_hour' resource (current value: 500)
| jshchnz wrote:
| going so viral it broke unroll
| daemonologist wrote:
| Seems to have been HN'ed to death:
|
| > _Connection failed: User 'uxxxxxxx_unroll' has exceeded the
| 'max_connections_per_hour' resource (current value: 500)_
|
| (Is that a MySQL error?)
| SushiHippie wrote:
| > (Is that a MySQL error?)
|
| Seems like it, but why would a website have such a (low)
| limit for mysql connections.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| The better to sink its teeth into your iPhone deeper . . .
| MBCook wrote:
| So it's all just stupidly big PDFs used as images of the
| different models?
|
| Not what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be more like the
| Colgate app mentioned later in thread.
| maccard wrote:
| That's insane. They should absolutely, 100% be pulled on
| demand.
| arghwhat wrote:
| They should just be made properly - a properly made PDF is
| less than a megabyte, and model pictures should be just
| hundreds of KB.
|
| Takes a lot of models and instructions to burn hundreds of
| megs that way.
| maccard wrote:
| Eh, I disagree. High res images are big no matter what way
| you cut it, and my mobile resolution is 2550x1800 - I don't
| mind the detail. But I don't need that detail for 15
| different toothbrush models.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| A 3840x2160 jpeg image at 100% quality is somewhere
| between 2 and 3 MB, so 15 models makes 45 MB, still way
| short of + 300 MB for the app.
| maccard wrote:
| 2.5MB is about an order of magnitude larger than the OP's
| hundreds of KB. I'd be fine with 3MB.
|
| But they should still be pulled on demand.
| arghwhat wrote:
| JPEG at 100% quality makes very little sense - the goal
| is to dial it down to the lowest value where artifacts
| are still low enough to not notice. AVIF also has much
| better behavior in the artifact department, letting you
| go much lower without introducing artifacts - you simply
| loose detail, which is no issue in a largely smooth
| product photo.
|
| For reference, my own photos downscaled to 3840x2560 AVIF
| for sharing purposes range from 500KB to 2MB depending on
| how "busy" the image is. The off-camera 6000x4000 JPEG is
| ~7MB in comparison.
|
| I stand by my opinion that a few hundred KB per image is
| plenty at the required resolution for model photos in an
| app.
| vel0city wrote:
| > The largest is `Sonos_M9_rose` at 7.8 MB
|
| So only twice the size of your JPEG example. Looking at
| the area chart of the files, it looks like the majority
| of the assets are less than that 2-3MB.
|
| https://xcancel.com/pic/orig/media%2FGWAYmxabsAApjwu.png
|
| There's probably over 200 or so assets in that 233MB
| archive.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Luckily we do not have to rely on opinion. Take this
| 1204x800 real-world photo which is less than 80KB:
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/link-u/avif-sample-
| images/...
|
| That's slightly less than half the height and width of
| your phone's screen respectively, so a decent
| representative of a model photo dimensions (which are
| usually widgets smaller than the screen).
|
| Model images would compress much better as they are
| edited to be much cleaner with smoothed solid colors and
| either solid or transparent backgrounds, and for
| something like a toothbrush you'd have an incredibly
| narrow image geometry making the final image likely much
| smaller.
|
| Even if you'd consider this image too small or too low
| resolution, bumping those would not push us past 150 or
| maybe maximum 200KB.
|
| (That repo has plenty of examples of other configuration
| examples if one is curious.)
| colecut wrote:
| does anyone really need that level of detail for even
| their own toothbrush model?
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Why? Is it not okay to ship them directly?
| code_duck wrote:
| It seems rather inefficient since most users will only have
| one model of toothbrush.
| maccard wrote:
| How many toothbrush models do you think the average person
| who downloads this app owns?
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Does it uses the pictures in some other ways like a list
| of available upgrades?
|
| Otherwise they save all the traffic and put it on the
| appstores and users and when they use some service for
| analytics they don't need to run any server themselves.
| Oral-B probably sells worldwide putting everything in the
| app instead of fetching it maybe saves them good money.
| MBCook wrote:
| I think there's nothing wrong with shipping the images, why
| should you need an Internet connection to pair your
| toothbrush (which of your using the app you must want to do).
|
| But why can't they be vector images? The pictures in the
| tweet looks like they could easily be replaced by vectors and
| the difference would be nearly unnoticeable.
| socksy wrote:
| I wonder if they generated the PDFs with a web browser's Print
| to PDF feature. Chrome's PDFs are massive.
| zerr wrote:
| I was expecting the usage of Unreal Engine. Last time I checked
| the minimal app was more than 200MB.
| larsrc wrote:
| The real question is why do toothbrushes need apps in the first
| place?
| jshchnz wrote:
| tbh i was wondering the same thing... brush stats, time per
| tooth maybe?
| jjeaff wrote:
| the one reason I have used the app is for my kids. it plays
| animations while they brush and keeps stats and let's them pick
| avatar colors and stuff as rewards.
| gibbitz wrote:
| So the animations are probably all embedded mpegs because
| what would a toothbrush company want to manage a CDN for...
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| (Hypothetical made-up example:) "Dental" chewing gum companies
| would pay $$$ for info on peoples' brushing habits crossed with
| demographics and geographical data: if the data shows that
| there's a particular city or county where people brush their
| teeth 25-50% less than the general population then there's a
| good bet they should increase their ad-spend in that area,
| because (let's say) people who don't brush their teeth are more
| ameneable to buying dental-gum to offset the damage of not
| brushing.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| It's not about data on your teeth, it's data about your
| device and network... you can grab all sorts of interesting
| data on your spending and habits by scanning bluetooth, local
| network etc. as well as sending up your ip and geolocation
| every few minutes.
|
| That's the really valuable stuff. The app's purported aim is
| simply to get it installed onto your mobile device.
| throw101010 wrote:
| To collect as much customer data as possible, to (hopefully)
| anonymize it and bundle it to sell them to data brokers and
| extract more money from their customer base...
|
| All of it with their "consent" (you installed the app and
| likely accepted their ToS/PIvacy Policy), under the pretense of
| providing them a service like counting the time/frequency of
| your interaction with the product or reminding you to use it
| (something you would already do anyways, maybe less accurately,
| if you are a functioning adult).
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Or less cynically1, people just want to track how well
| they're brushing their teeth between visits to the dentist.
| Same reason we track our water intake, calorie intake, heart
| rate, exercise, menstrual cycles, etc. when we could just use
| analog tools to do the same thing (or not track it at all).
|
| 1 I'm not suggesting these particular companies aren't
| selling customer data.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Because it's cool man!
|
| BTW, I stayed over at a friend's place one time, and he donated
| me a new electric tooth brush. How can people even use this? I
| found it extremely hurtful on my teeth. I would not use it if
| you paid me.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Not to be that guy, but you may be using it wrong, or it's a
| really cheap and not particularly well made tooth brush. I
| can't even imagine how it would hurt your teeth, it's just a
| tooth brush with small circular motions in the brush head.
| Beijinger wrote:
| It was definitely nothing fancy, but I found it hurtful.
| But maybe I just have sensitive teeth. I do get my teeth
| professionally cleaned every 6 months, but this is also
| nothing I look forward too.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| They show you if you have spent sufficient time on the front,
| top, and back of each tooth. Electric toothbrushes are used
| differently than manual brushes (you don't move them back and
| forth).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >The only other nodes that jump out is the `Comino.bundle` (15
| MB), which has files like
| `20class_seqlen26_6p5h_20200302-095627_comino_android_production`
| Guessing these are some sort of model weights
|
| Fuck you. A "toothbrush app" which shouldn't exist in the first
| place CANNOT justify AI anything.
|
| What an indictment of our entire industry, nobody stopped this at
| any point. Nobody said "no we can't justify doing this to our
| customers", nobody said "this is an insane waste of the resources
| of everyone", nobody said "this is atrocious". APPLE didn't say
| "No you can't do this to the people we supposedly lock the garden
| for".
|
| The management of our entire industry needs to be re-educated.
|
| Also, how is it POSSIBLE to ship duplicate files in such an
| ecosystem? Apple could trivially and invisibly duplicate files in
| the file system and app submissions.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Nobody said you should get riled up for something that does not
| affect you in the slightest, unless you want it to.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Let's say everytime you ask your GPT about liquor, get drunk
| and don't brush teeth your dental GPT reports that and next
| time when you search for liquor you get a nice reminder to
| brush later with fitting dental advertisement.
| pif wrote:
| My question is: why do an Oral-B app and a Colgate app even
| exist?
| fragmede wrote:
| to log how well you're brushing your teeth, so it can advise
| you on how to brush your teeth better, so you can have better
| teeth and not have to see the dentist. it's a late stage
| technology thing.
|
| I wasn't born with an innate ability to know how to brush my
| teeth or how to shave (my electric razor also has an app), I
| had to learn how. If the devices I use can tell that I'm using
| them wrong, and there's a better way to do things, it's nice to
| have it tell me.
| broast wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the apps, how does it measure and
| improve your dental health?
| russb wrote:
| The idea is to help focus brushing on specific teeth or
| quadrants, and it uses Bluetooth to know when the brush is
| on or off. Maybe it signals when you push too hard and the
| brush pauses for a second as well.
|
| To my knowledge it does not know where you are in your
| mouth when brushing (positioning via
| accelerometer/gyroscope), so a synchronized start would
| likely give similar results.
| rdudek wrote:
| Except brushing is just one piece of an overall oral health.
| Flossing is another thing. Then you got your diet which plays
| a great role in your teeth health. How would one tracking app
| know all of this?
| vel0city wrote:
| Tracking the temperature and time of cooking is only one
| part about grilling meats. There's still cutting the meat,
| ingredients in the rub, applying the rub, the cooldown, the
| final slicing, and so much more. Why bother having an app-
| connected remote thermometer if it can't do all of these
| things?
|
| I don't care for an app-connected toothbrush personally.
| But suggesting that just because it can't keep track of
| your diet overall means it can't possibly give any insights
| in health is overly reductive. A workout tracker app can't
| keep track of your food intake, but that doesn't mean it
| can't help the user be healthier.
| barbazoo wrote:
| When I was a child we got taught that at school. They had a
| large model of the human mouth and an oversized toothbrush.
| Perhaps that's too low tech for folks nowadays, I don't know.
|
| Apart from the I go to the dentist 2-3 times a year, they do
| a great job telling me what area of my mouth I need to focus
| on. A toothbrush wouldn't really be able to give me that info
| anyway.
| ragnese wrote:
| And if we were in an alternate universe where we had reason
| to believe that the app did this analysis offline and never
| sent the data off to be sold to who-knows-who, that would be
| fine.
| eagerpace wrote:
| To collect data so they can do marketing and advertising to
| customers.
| lowtech8 wrote:
| And charge them more, maybe sell some of their personal data
| too
| maccard wrote:
| To who?
|
| Say I have an app with 1M downloads. Who do I sell 1M email
| addresses and the fact they've bought a toothbrush to?
| johndough wrote:
| People who install a tooth brushing app will probably buy
| all kinds of electronics stuff, so I'd wager that such a
| list would be somewhat valuable.
| maccard wrote:
| I hear these things, but I don't know who these companies
| are. It feels a bit like the tv license ban
| ragnese wrote:
| Honestly, even if it's not sustainable and never ends up
| profitable, I'd be willing to bet there are multiple
| entities that exist that would pay you some ridiculous
| amount of money for that info just to try to resell that
| info or attempt to monetize it directly "some day".
|
| Think about how many companies have pivoted to burning
| cash on adding "AI" to their products. How many of those
| cases are going to end up actually being a good business
| decision? Probably very few. It's likely the same with
| everyone just wanting "data" to "analyze"--even if they
| have no idea how it might be useful.
| barbazoo wrote:
| How does that work here? Say I have that toothbrush, the app,
| and say I had to sign up to use it. What they know is how
| long the toothbrush is on. How are they going to monetize
| that data?
| flerchin wrote:
| I'd always thought that it was about any other data they
| can slurp from your phone. Presumably knowing your hygiene
| habits is valuable when correlated with your facebook
| activty. Just having a list of people that overspend on
| this type of tech and have the app installed is probably
| valuable.
|
| tl;dr IDK but they don't do it without a profit motive.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Like if the average user uses it for 15 seconds, it might
| signal them that the existing brushes need to be
| wider/longer/arced, so users can clean their teeth
| efficiently in that timeframe.
|
| And yeah, the usual electric toothbrushes are terrible slow
| since the brush heads are in the size of one teeth, instead
| of 3-4.
| willcipriano wrote:
| You know the underpants gnomes, it's like that:
|
| Step 1: collect data
|
| Step 2: ???
|
| Step 3: Profit
|
| Hopefully you sell the company between Step 1 and 2.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Well, say the app requests access to your contacts... so
| you can link up with friends! Or your files... so it can
| save your data locally! Or your location... well i don't
| know. The app doesn't only check your bruhing habits, it's
| 300mb! At any point it could be updated to do any amount of
| spying and you'll never be able to tell
| Bluestein wrote:
| > link up with friends!
|
| Competitive brushing!
| uhtred wrote:
| What permissions does the app ask for? Most likely location
| for some bullshit Bluetooth feature, and no doubt they
| request other permissions like contacts and media so you
| can share with friends that you clean your teeth.
|
| Hey, now oral b know where you are all the time, who you
| know etc
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Looking at my android...notifications and nearby BT
| devices. Thats it.
| johndough wrote:
| > What they know is how long the toothbrush is on. How are
| they going to monetize that data?
|
| "We noticed that brushing takes you X seconds longer than
| usual. Do you want to buy new bristles for your tooth
| brush?"
|
| "We noticed you haven't used our tooth brush in a while. Do
| you want to buy our new tooth brush?"
|
| "We noticed that you started brushing your teeth earlier
| than usual. This probably means that you started a new job
| and can afford our new deluxe premium tooth brush."
|
| "We noticed that you brush your teeth later than usual.
| That probably means that you met with someone who you can
| recommend our amazing tooth brush to."
|
| "We noticed that your tooth brushing times are all over the
| place, so you probably had a child. Buy our new baby tooth
| brush."
|
| And that is just from the time you brush your teeth.
| However, the app also collections "Health and fitness and
| Device or other IDs" according to the app description:
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pg.oralb.
| o...
|
| That means that Oral B can link that data with the data
| harvested from other apps or data brokers, so they probably
| know everything about you. Health data seems especially
| creepy to me. I wonder if it is possible to measure the
| effectiveness of an advertisement from the heart rate data.
| At least they can definitely tell if you brush longer after
| seeing their latest Oral B add on TV/YouTube/some website.
| mturmon wrote:
| Yeah, regarding your first point -- the replacement
| brushes are also an Oral-B product, so prompting for
| frequent replacement of the brushes would be a way to
| make more money.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| I'm surprised they haven't gone down the route of TaaS
| (Toothbrush as a Service), where they sell a crippled
| device, and for a monthly fee of a few dollars, it will
| unlock a premium 'Ultra Fast Brush Speed' a la Tesla.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Sell it to dental insurance companies who charge different
| amounts depending on how frequently you brush your teeth
| and for how long?
| kelnos wrote:
| I can think of a few things at least:
|
| * Collect data on brushing frequency and thoroughness, and
| sell that data to dental insurance companies. Perhaps not
| even anonymized, so they can raise your premiums if you
| don't brush as often or as well as they'd like.
|
| * Nag you to buy brush replacements after a certain amount
| of time or certain number of uses.
|
| * Use dark patterns to trick you into giving access to
| other, unrelated data on your phone, and sell this data to
| third parties.
|
| * Market their other products to you, or even perhaps
| suggest other things (sold by marketing partners) to buy,
| like different kinds of toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, etc.
| api wrote:
| That's why most apps exist, which is why I try to install
| as few apps as possible.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| _so they can raise your premiums if you don 't brush as
| often or as well as they'd like._
|
| Shit's already fucking happening with car insurance.
| Install their app to reduce your premium! It's only a
| matter of time before it's the other way around.
| pfdietz wrote:
| "Here's a list of consumers who were gullible enough to
| install our app!"
| conductr wrote:
| They want you to buy new head and they will annoy, I mean
| notify you, until you do so via the app.
| winternett wrote:
| The extra code might there to determine your spending habits
| across other apps and your bank balance and then to determine
| where you're located so that it can provide information on
| regional affluence so they can price toothpaste & brushes
| higher in strategic regions...
|
| That's just an example guess, but the bloat is there for a
| purpose... I'm pretty sure the app gets updated on intervals
| too, just like so many others under the guise of "security or
| functional updates".
|
| We're in an era where data is weaponized for profit
| maximization... The most simple and seemingly benign data
| sets when combined strategically can work against consumers
| deeply.
|
| We need app audit boards now, maybe even on a government
| level, and specific detail of everything apps do to be
| displayed in app stores. There should be serious consequences
| if apps are found to do things that are not detailed in their
| release/update descriptions. This collected data can persist
| forever, and be used in some of the most destructive ways.
|
| Device/OS makers also need to do better at
| preventing/partitioning non-essential apps from collecting
| data they don't need access to...
|
| Likely reasons why this isn't already in place is because
| most don't know how it happens, and many others are invested
| in these companies, so they turn a blind eye on regulation of
| them.
| ragnese wrote:
| To be fair, all of that tracking and data collection would
| still never add up to some 100MB. It's more likely that
| they have extremely unoptimized assets (images, icons,
| fonts, time zone data, sounds, etc) and/or are using one of
| these janky "frameworks" that let you slap together a half-
| baked "native" app in a few hours by translating your
| poorly-written JavaScript into poorly-written native code.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| From the x thread 80% of the size is pdfs of their
| toothbrush products.
| ragnese wrote:
| Makes sense. I don't have an X account, so I can only see
| the linked post (AFAIK).
| JohnBooty wrote:
| This is undoubtedly true. It _might_ be doing nefarious
| things, but it was _definitely_ not written with
| efficiency in mind.
| gruez wrote:
| >The extra code might there to determine your spending
| habits across other apps and your bank balance and then to
| determine where you're located so that it can provide
| information on regional affluence so they can price
| toothpaste & brushes higher in strategic regions...
|
| 1. I highly doubt that's done on device
|
| 2. how are they supposed to link you to your bank account?
| AFAIK cross app tracking is opt in, at least on iOS so
| unless the user explicitly opts in, you're not going to get
| a cross-app identifier.
| stratocumulus0 wrote:
| Or maybe it's because every other company has an app, just
| like every company had a hotline at some point. Even if few
| people will use it, you have to have all the communication
| channels covered.
| maest wrote:
| I suggest reading the posted link, it's quite informative
| and saves you from having to make assumptions.
| RIMR wrote:
| The same reason your smartwatch and bathroom scale has an app:
| People want to log and track their health data.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| But you're logging actual data with those? Or do they make
| tooth brushes which monitor your mouth's biome or something
| like that these days?
| antimemetics wrote:
| Yes they make a 3d map of your mouth. It's nonsensical but
| here we are
| datavirtue wrote:
| Product owners love that shit. No thoughts or analysis
| required. "That's so cool...I LOVE IT!" I hear that
| phrase used on so many boring, bad ideas.
| diggan wrote:
| > Or do they make tooth brushes which monitor your mouth's
| biome or something like that these days?
|
| I'd buy a toothbrush that did that, even if it had "AI" in
| it's name.
|
| But no, I think it just logs the brush duration and for the
| more expensive models the "coverage", or something like
| that.
| vel0city wrote:
| Not biome, but it is pretty trivial to track:
|
| - Brushing pressure
|
| - How long you brush
|
| - When you brush
|
| - Where you brush (tracking orientation and motion)
|
| With that, you might see some trend of "you brush your
| left-back-bottom teeth a little harder than the rest, and
| you're not quite getting your front middle teeth very
| well".
|
| Now, if that data is actually useful logged and analyzed is
| another question.
|
| I've got a toothbrush that theoretically has bluetooth
| connectivity support. I've never used it. But I do like
| there's a colorful ring that lights up to show the brushing
| pressure and I do like the 30 second timer feature to help
| ensure I brush each area of my mouth about the same amount
| of time. Neither require bluetooth and an app though.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| "People want to log and track their health data"?
|
| People want to log and track _your_ health data.
| beejiu wrote:
| The same reason they now have a toothbrush with AI. Because
| they are in a race to continuously re-invent the toothbrush
| every year to create new USPs, create new marketing angles and
| keep sales high.
| uhtred wrote:
| A toothbrush with AI is the funniest thing I've read today,
| thank you.
| NeoTar wrote:
| I have seen products reported about on YouTube that used
| 'ai' to mean a timer.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| As Arthur Schopenhauer said: "Buying books would be a good
| thing if you could also buy the time to read them" People
| think that everything can be solved by an app, "if you can't
| do it without it probly won't with it either"
| axegon_ wrote:
| I asked a similar question a while back on here regarding a
| toothbrush with an esp inside. I think one of the answers I got
| captured it nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ4W7yB9Mow
| supercoffee wrote:
| I'm surprised that health insurance companies haven't started
| offering "good brusher" discounts the way car insurance
| companies offer a "good driver" discount when you use their car
| data logging device/app.
| tqi wrote:
| Dental insurance isn't really insurance, in the usual
| sense[1].
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/23901293/dentist-delta-dental-
| insurance-...
| kelnos wrote:
| Most regular medical insurance isn't really insurance, in
| the usual sense. "Classical" insurance only pays out when
| something goes wrong, in defined amounts based on what's
| gone wrong. And while certainly insurers like to find ways
| not to pay out when you report a claim, there are usually
| far fewer gotchas with things like auto insurance, home
| insurance, event insurance, etc., than there is for medical
| insurance, where you could be denied coverage just because
| the "wrong" ambulance company took you to the hospital. Not
| to mention that anything that pays for preventative
| doctor/dentist/etc. visits isn't really "insurance".
|
| But it's fine; we call it insurance anyway, and everyone
| knows what it means, so there's no problem.
| tqi wrote:
| That's not the point. From the article:
|
| "When you look at the dental insurance model, it doesn't
| protect the patient from financial risk. It's the
| opposite," said Marko Vujicic, chief economist and vice
| president of the Health Policy Institute at the American
| Dental Association. "Once the benefit runs out, the
| $1,400 or whatever it is, all of that financial burden is
| on the patient. So it protects the insurer, they're
| limited on their exposure."
|
| In other words, there is no real benefit to offering a
| "good brusher" discounts.
| ragnese wrote:
| I fucking hate this dystopian future we've already entered.
| It's only a matter of time until every car on the road is
| connected to the internet and has the "good driver" logging
| built-in and automatically sent to your insurer. They'll also
| know exactly where you've driven to and when via GPS. Then
| they'll offer you discounts on the restaurants and stores you
| frequently drive to, and everyone will love it and tell ME
| that I'm the crazy one...
|
| /rant
| jimjimjim wrote:
| It's like those ads for coke or mcdonalds. They aren't giving
| anybody any new information. Instead it's to continuously put
| the logos, branding and name into the mind of the viewer/user.
| That way people should feel that brand is more familiar to them
| rather than all the other "unknown" brands and will be more
| likely to by said brand. Same thing with the app. They get
| their logo/brand in your eyes every time you need to use it.
| Takeaway: They don't even need to sell the data
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| In America, you buy a toothbrush. In Soviet Russia, toothbrush
| buys you!
| deepfriedchokes wrote:
| It's this but backwards.
| eloisant wrote:
| The app can tell you which teeth are correctly cleaned (i.e.
| you spend enough time on it) and which teeth you forgot or went
| too fast.
|
| Personally I just used it once and ended up removing it, but I
| can see some people using it to ensure their brushing is
| efficient.
|
| Anyway, it's completely optional, you can just use the brush
| ignoring the existence of the app.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| That's actually kind of cool. That's exactly the sort of
| feedback that gets me to do things correctly. Detailed
| feedback has enabled me to consistently work out, wake up
| early and eat healthy. They've helped me keep those good
| habits going for 4 years now. I'm the kind of guy these apps
| are built for.
| leipert wrote:
| If you don't mind me asking, how do you keep track of
| eating healthy?
| jjulius wrote:
| But "detailed feedback" isn't "accurate feedback". I mean,
| it's pretty 'neat' that it can tell you which teeth have
| been 'correctly' cleaned based on the amount of time you
| spend in a specific spot, but is that an accurate gauge?
|
| What if you (for whatever reason, doesn't matter) only ate
| on the left side of your mouth for dinner? You'd spend
| plenty of time on the left side, but the app might tell you
| you've done a bad job on the right. Further, depending on
| what you ate, it might take longer than whatever their
| predetermined time is to clean the side that had a
| disproportionate amount of food on it.
|
| What if you have had a tough time with a couple of "problem
| teeth" that need a bit more love? Is the app capable of
| tracking where those "problem teeth" are and ensuring that
| you're spending extra attention there?
|
| I dunno... to me, it seems like it's a no brainer to me
| when my teeth are clean - I can feel it. Unless a
| toothbrush has some detailed sensors in the head, I'm gonna
| seriously doubt its ability to tell me when my teeth are
| actually clean.
| cal85 wrote:
| How does it know which tooth you're cleaning?
| stavros wrote:
| Probably an accelerometer.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I could see that working if your head is locked in a
| vise, but otherwise that's hard to believe.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _How does it know which tooth you're cleaning?_
|
| How does it even have a census of your teeth?
|
| Some people have wisdom teeth, while other people don't.
|
| Some people have been on the losing end of a bar fight with
| carneys, and some people haven't.
| jon889 wrote:
| I recently bought an oral-b toothbrush with the AI app thing,
| and it's worked really well. Something about making the
| little dots disappear mean I'm now cleaning my teeth properly
| for 2m30s. Wish I'd had it a lot earlier and maybe I wouldn't
| have so many fillings. (I swear this isn't an ad, I bought it
| on prime day thinking I'd probably return it).
|
| Also I doubt it's AI, just doing something fairly basic with
| the accelerometer data
| bugbuddy wrote:
| Because humanity has to keep itself busy with trivial things or
| civilization will implode from sheer boredom.
| kelnos wrote:
| Didn't read as I'm on a no-Twitter diet, so I'm not sure
| exactly which app they're referring to, but my Oral-B
| toothbrush has an app that tracks brushing habits over
| Bluetooth.
|
| I decided when I bought it that I would never ever ever install
| that app or make use of these features (it's _tooth-brushing_ ,
| for crying out loud), and I don't feel like I'm missing out on
| anything.
|
| I'm sure the company just wants to collect data about my
| brushing habits in order to sell it to... someone, who knows.
| onion2k wrote:
| Aren't you buying a toothbrush with a bunch of features
| you'll never use though? Why not just buy a less fully-
| featured privacy respecting toothbrush?
|
| (Something is up with the world when you're thinking about
| toothbrushes that respect your privacy. It's like something
| out of a Douglas Adams book.)
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, but pretty much my only considerations were the
| quality of brushing, cost of new brushes, and general
| reliability. The one I thought was best and in-budget just
| happened to have these anti-features too, which fortunately
| I don't have to use.
|
| It wasn't worth it to me to spend more time on it to see if
| I could find something without the connected crap.
|
| (And I do wonder if the connected crap makes the device
| _cheaper_ , since they're hoping to make money on selling
| user data.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They need some reason to make you think that a $$$ toothbrush
| that is yet another device that takes up another electrical
| outlet and space on your bathroom countertop is better than a
| $2 brush you can keep out of sight in a drawer and that you
| will never forget to charge.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| As someone that owns a $2 tooth brush, I've always wondered
| if it was better to put it in a drawer where mould etc might
| build up on the brush faster, but it was protected from the
| air in the rest of the bathroom (c.f. Mythbusters "There is
| poop on everything").
|
| Perhaps the answer is to put the toothbrush in a different
| room!
| rychco wrote:
| More embarrassing than the size itself is that it is supposedly
| _required_ to change the mode of the toothbrush. I truly do not
| think this should be allowed, but I'm not sure how to approach
| enforcing it.
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| Well, challenge number one is having a consumer protection
| agency that's legally empowered to pull products that are
| defective by design from the market. Second challenge is
| precisely defining what is and is not allowed, but given the
| sheer number of stupid things that a business could conceivably
| do to fuck with their customers, I'm willing to give such an
| agency a fair amount of latitude to evaluate things and make
| decisions, so long as the decisions are based on a good set of
| core principles. (E.g., "functionality that can be implemented
| without a companion app must not require a companion app".)
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| You are wildly optimistic about the competency of government
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I guess it depends on which one you have and what mode you want
| to change, but I have the Oral-B Pro 5000, and have been able
| to change cleaning modes ("Daily Clean", "Sensitive", etc) and
| the color of the LED at the tip without the app. The display
| shows a timer for cleaning time which is all the tracking I
| need from a toothbrush.
|
| There could be other modes that aren't accessible from the
| buttons, but none that I'm aware of.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Why do we need legislation against this? Just don't buy the
| toothbrush and let the product die of natural causes
| geoelectric wrote:
| On my IO, you can change the mode from the toothbrush, but the
| selection of modes to change from is on the app. However, I
| think it defaults to "all of them" so it's still usable without
| ever running the app.
| notamy wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/emergetools/status/1828490449881047401
| manav wrote:
| Some of the apps do 3d maps / AI positioning.
| RIMR wrote:
| Every health company out there has an app that connects their
| devices, but make one for a toothbrush and people freak out like
| this is the first time we've ever let an app measure something
| health-related.
|
| Y'all will back smart watches that know all your vitals, and
| pendants that listen to everything you say, but log how
| frequently and thoroughly you brush your teeth, and suddenly
| there's an outrage.
|
| As for why they are 300MB? It sounds like it was just poorly
| packaged assets. That's stupid, but also not a big deal.
| badgersnake wrote:
| So many reasons not to use Twitter, but "because you are
| blogging" is up there.
| jakelsaunders94 wrote:
| Possibly a controversial opinion here but... who cares? I don't
| mean this in a snarky way. If you're an app developer you've got
| limited development time like everyone else. Most phones have at
| least 128gb internal memory and the app is downloaded over WiFi.
| I just don't see this as a constraint. Sure you could have a CDN
| and lazy load but then the app doesn't work without internet.
| Just dump it all on the device.
| ravenstine wrote:
| To me, it's not so much about the size itself but its
| correlation with poorly engineered applications that are slow,
| buggy, and stupid.
| joebob42 wrote:
| Felt the same. I agree with the whole "why is there even an
| app" thread, but it being 300mb doesn't seem like that big a
| deal to me.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > who cares?
|
| Some people have limited storage space remaining on their
| device. Some people have slow Internet, or capped Internet.
| jakelsaunders94 wrote:
| Limited storage space is a valid argument I guess, though
| with music / everything streaming these days I've always
| struggled to see how you'd fill up a 128gb phone. And I've
| obviously got no data to support this but i suspect the cross
| number of people downloading the Oral B toothbrush app on 4G
| internet out and about would be low. Feels like the number of
| people in developing countries buying an app-enabled
| toothbrush would be similar.
| pjs_ wrote:
| Hell yeah brother lfg
| egorfine wrote:
| Imagine how dead inside of a developer one has to be to deliver
| this.
| vindex10 wrote:
| Not sure whether there is a payment module in there, but that's
| why Uber app is so heavy:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeCYiD0hnE
| FredPret wrote:
| I bought an electric toothbrush from Walmart for $6.99 probably 5
| years ago. It takes Oral-B brush heads and AA batteries. It's not
| capable of using an app. Who know being a tech guy would make me
| love as-simple-as-possible "retro" devices.
| layer8 wrote:
| That's every other tech guy. It's a common effect.
| lloeki wrote:
| > _I work in IT, which is the reason our house has:
|
| - mechanical locks
|
| - mechanical windows
|
| - routers using OpenWRT
|
| - no smart home crap
|
| - no Alexa/Google Assistant/...
|
| - no internet connected thermostats_
|
| >> _Tech Enthusiasts_ : Everything in my house is wired to
| the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone!
| My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice
| commands via alexa! I love the future!
|
| >> _Programmers / Engineers_: The most recent piece of
| technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded
| gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
|
| - https://imgur.com/6wbgy2L
| FredPret wrote:
| I think this happened when tech went mainstream. I used to
| love cutting-edge gadgets.
| ptrrrrrrppr wrote:
| electric and sonic toothbrushes are completely different
| things. get yourself a sonic one, thank me later
| whartung wrote:
| Sonic toothbrushes make my arm go numb.
|
| "I'm holding it wrong."
|
| So, I don't use them.
| 0x0 wrote:
| The Oral-B app was fun a few years ago when it was fairly
| lightweight, showed an up-to-date current world events news feed,
| while logging data into apple health and encouraging a brushing
| streak. Then they rewrote the entire app and it lost almost all
| of those features. I never opened the app once after the first
| run after the upgrade. Really makes me wish for an iOS app store
| that would allow installing older versions, like testflight does
| (up to 90 days only, unfortunately). Maybe it's time to break out
| a BLE sniffer... although I'm sure getting a HealthKit
| entitlement for a one-off unlicensed adhoc app is impossible :(
| zyberzero wrote:
| The protocol has already been reverse engineered. I'm using
| Home Assistant with bluetooth and it picks up one of my
| neighbour's Oral-B toothbrush...
| nabla9 wrote:
| Can you reprogram or remote update the toothbrush?
|
| I mean, if it has vibration or sound, you might be able make
| it talk or play music.
| alentred wrote:
| > showed an up-to-date current world events news feed
|
| Say what now? Oral-B? World events news feed?
| cj wrote:
| ADA recommends brushing your teeth for 4 minutes a day (2
| mins morning/night).
|
| 2 minutes feels incredibly long for a lot of people. Doing
| something that feels productive or provides 2 minutes of
| entertainment while simultaneously operating as a timer seems
| like not so crazy of an idea.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| What kind of sane person is downloading a toothbrush app?
| uhtred wrote:
| People are so dumb! Who the fuck installs an Oral B app!
| settsu wrote:
| I know this is probably going to land with a thud in this venue,
| but as a counterpoint to the predictable "why do toothbrushes
| need an app?!", it should at least be acknowledged that these
| apps might be the first and only place someone could learn of
| good oral hygiene.
| antimemetics wrote:
| Weird, I learned this in three places, at kindergarten, again
| in school, and at home
| settsu wrote:
| And that's good! But it can't be assumed that everyone had
| the benefit of that experience.
| wolpoli wrote:
| I only have the app installed so I can check my battery
| percentage.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Because developers who make toothbrush apps don't care. For these
| long tail apps, the standard tooling has to be idiot proof, and
| no you're not going to sell tooling to these developers -- they
| don't care.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Personally, I've used both and they work pretty well at
| displaying where your toothbush is in relation to the rest of
| your mouth and tracking your habits, etc.
|
| Don't dis it until you try it.
| kevinsync wrote:
| I can't comment specifically about either of these apps, and I
| actually may be hypothesizing in the wrong direction (especially
| if they're somehow hilariously connecting to an electric
| toothbrush, and developed these apps in-house) but...
|
| 1. an agency probably built these apps, an arena where I've
| worked or contributed to for 15 years that is defined by
| arbitrary quarterly client budgets and flavor of the month tech
| stacks evangelized by a rotating cast of characters (including
| random contractors), due mostly to high industry turnover, mis-
| allocation of project 'resources' (human beings), moving
| goalposts often dictated by client whim, etc etc, all in the
| pursuit of technology deliverables that are intentionally
| crippled by analytics libraries and conceived almost entirely by
| creative departments that "ladder up to the dynamic storytelling
| and next-gen digital transformations that Brand X will deliver
| holistically to its army of advocates and consumer clusters who
| crave end-to-end digital alchemy and mindblowing content journeys
| on socials".
|
| (don't forget, we sell electric toothbrushes)
|
| You can imagine how in that environment it's Thunderdome,
| anything goes! :-D
|
| And of course I'm being actively silly in my description, but
| it's worth painting this picture to articulate that a lot of
| these projects are moving too fast and have too many things
| literally bolted onto to them to ever find themselves in a place
| where you could package and release a 10MB app again.
|
| 2. after throwing that industry under the bus, I opened Xcode to
| interrogate one of my own iOS apps, of which I'm the sole and
| only contributor, painstakingly birthed from scratch with love.
|
| IT, TOO, IS 300MB, much to my surprise!
|
| The app itself does a lot of things:
|
| - beautiful onboarding screens that you likely only ever see once
| (graphics, video, etc)
|
| - complex notification receipt and display
|
| - full-featured audio player
|
| - embedded HTML webviews and code for audio visualization
|
| - custom iOS Sticker extension
|
| - integrated image editor
|
| - iOS widgets
|
| - Apple Watch support
|
| - tvOS support for a completely unique second-screen experience
|
| - a bunch of frameworks and libraries, leveraged for different
| reasons (Messages, WidgetKit, SwiftUI, SPPermissions, Haneke,
| MarqueeLabel, NotificationBannerSwift, Reachability, SDWebImage,
| Shift, SnapKit, SwiftAudioEx, SwiftQueue, SwiftyJSON)
|
| But realistically, the app actually only does two things: plays
| some tunes and lets you know when some new merch is for sale. The
| rest of the stuff is shiny toy territory. Then you compile and
| package it up, and voila, 300MB.
|
| Turns out, I'm just as culpable for the bloat as any agency or
| poor soul making apps these days -- you're gonna reach for
| libraries and include giant assets and do all this stuff that's
| probably not sane, while in the pursuit of fun, beauty,
| innovation, or I guess even just collecting intrusive metrics on
| people's dental habits.
| pixl97 wrote:
| While I can't say anything about these apps, I do work close to a
| bunch of companies that make and distribute software, and there
| is a general rule I see.
|
| The crappier the companies software security is, the larger their
| apps are.
|
| One of the large companies I work with takes software security
| seriously and has internal employees that make most of the
| software, and internal security teams that audit it. Outside of
| having low defect rates, their software is also small and
| streamlined. They just don't have tons of external libraries they
| pull in unless it's for a legitimate reason.
|
| Another large company in the same industry has almost everyone
| making their software as an external contractor. Employees turn
| over all the time and no one stays on a team long. I swear they
| make software by running 'npm install *'. Their software
| binaries/release are much much larger than the first company.
| Their defect rate is huge, which causes huge delays in releasing
| software because there are always a pile of showstopper security
| tasks before release that anything that's not showstopper gets
| ignored.
| sukispeeler wrote:
| What drives me nuts is that gathering user data for data brokers
| is such a valuable operation. I am sorry, but I can't sit here
| and be excited about who numbers are going up at conglomerates as
| they continue to make apps to extract data rather than any sort
| of good product. I know I have officially passed middle age due
| to my good old day's rant, but fridges, dishwashers, and
| toothbrushes with apps... like when the dishwasher loads itself.
| I'll accept the hedonistic inflation adjustments.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| I just checked on the Play Store and it seems like the Oral B
| Android App is "only" 67MB. I wonder if these were developed by
| different teams and maybe it doesn't have those large PDFs?
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pg.oralb.o...
| beryilma wrote:
| Next we will get subscription toothbrush features. Personally, I
| want my ultrasonic toothbrush to hum to the tune of Taylor Swift
| songs.
|
| More seriously, at this point, any idiot who downloads such
| invasive apps deserves its consequences.
| ElFitz wrote:
| The Colgate one is probably still based on Kolibree[0]. I
| remember the KL prefix.
|
| I don't know about the Oral-B app, but the Colgate / Kolibree at
| least had some mostly accurate mapping of brushed areas (when
| using one of their "smart" toothbrushes).
|
| [0]: https://www.kolibree.com/en
| delduca wrote:
| Please, avoid X links
| Mr_Modulo wrote:
| What's wrong with x.com links?
| delduca wrote:
| Please, avoid X links, I do not have an account there and they do
| not allow me to view.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| https://nitter.poast.org/emergetools/status/1828490449881047...
| Here's a link that can be actually viewed.
| hi_hi wrote:
| The truely sad part, they could be 1GB and no one would care.
| nom wrote:
| 15 years ago Apple told us "There is an app for that" and we were
| excited.
|
| It reads quite a bit differently now :D
| pzo wrote:
| The sad truth is that if you go to App Store > Your Accoun and
| refresh you will see that only handful of application are less
| than 100MB. In my case most apps are 300MB and we are talking
| only about update. I compared with Android and over there all
| apps are much less heavy. I noticed old Objective-C app used to
| much more slim and all Swift even after having ABI are big and
| fat.
|
| It's partially because of developer laziness and partially
| because Apple tools sux - there is no tree shaking or dead code
| removal from compiled cocoapods or swift packages. Apple probably
| don't care and more than happy to sell you the next shiny device
| with more storage or subscription to iCloud.
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