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I believe that's how the Ikea app and at least one Wikipedia-based app (sorry, can't remember the name) work. Small app download, followed by a larger content download.

Nobody's gonna let it download 600 MB more over that same 3G connection on first launch. People would just be even more disappointed.

It depends on the content. IIRC, you can't download executable code – JSON is fine.

I know many game developers that download assets (spritemaps, textures, etc) over http. In fact, it was one of the bullet points in Apple's Optimizing game development on iOS talk this past WWDC.