Xcode 4.3's 'estimated app store size' is considerably different than .ipa file, why?

Question

I had been using Xcode 4.2 up till last week and I was using the size of my .ipa file to estimate the size of my app in the app store (I\'ve kept it just under 20MB) and its

Answer 1

You can more or less ignore XCode's "estimate" (or roughly cut it in half) for most iOS apps. The IPA is the size of the app. This doubling in estimated size seems to be linked to the architecture build overhaul in 4.3.2. Since you are likely building your app for "armv6 armv7", it's doubling it for some reason. I recently uploaded my previously 15MB app with minor changes. XCode shows 30MB estimated size for the archive. Sure enough, the new app is actually 15.2MB on the app store.

If you want a better estimate, simply right-click the archive in the Organizer and select Show in Finder. There, you can again right-click and drill down into the archive to see the actual package and contents. The app is the only thing of substantive size and is a very good estimation of the App Store size.

Answer 2

The App store encrypts most of your binary executable, which renders it no-longer compressible inside the new ipa file that the App store creates for each customer. You have to look at the uncompressed size of your binary executable and add most of that size to your zip-ed .ipa size to get the new App store .ipa size.