Indeed the ObjC people were right (I was one of them). But there is nothing more useless than standing in the corner and saying “I told you so”. That’s the curmudgeon.
It’s not about collecting info before you open the app. What happens with most people is they open the app, request a ride, then close the app again and do something else until the driver has arrived notification. Location services start out with a wider range and narrow in on you over time, so a longer collection window gives more precision.
It’s interesting to me that you came away from this thinking that I didn’t realize the eng size growth was the problem. I specifically said in the third tweet that hypergrowth was the problem. I even went on to say why it was a problem. The entire point of including the details about the org growth was specifically to draw you to that conclusion.
Looking at the bundle now is not going to give you insight into the problems in the Uber app 4 years ago. Also you’re looking at the uncompressed install size, which was not the problem (over the air compressed download size was the limiting factor). Strings files are extremely compressible, encrypted binaries are not (Apple has done some work in subsequent years to make them more compressible but back then they were basically uncompressible).