Apple has increased the maximum size of apps in the App Store. Developers can now upload binaries (app packages) as large as 4GB through iTunes Connect, up from the 2GB limit that has been in place since the App Store debuted in 2008.
In a brief notice regarding the change, Apple said this will allow developers to include more media in their submissions and provide a more complete, rich user experience upon installation.
It's worth pointing out that this change doesn't impact the size threshold that an app must stay under in order to be downloadable via cellular network which remains at 100MB. After all, nobody wants to burn up an entire month of data or more just to download a single app.
For consumers, this simply means that those smaller capacity devices with 8GB and 16GB of storage are suddenly much less appealing.
I'm about as far from the stereotypical mobile user / geek as one can get while still loving technology. I don't play mobile games (or really, any games at all these days), I no longer bother with social networking and I have zero interest in Star Wars / Lord of the Rings / Star Trek or any other fictional sci-fi classics.
Yet I noticed with my last phone that 16GB of storage was no longer sufficient. Between the various apps I do use (productivity, entertainment, IoT stuff), I often ran out of space and was forced to delete content if I wanted to snap a quick photo or video.
Even with the advent of cloud storage, we're quickly approaching the point of where 32GB will be the new entry-level configuration.