HN user
That's interesting. The alert should only be presented to you twice - if you respond No to both cases, it should simply disable location services for the app.
Mind you, I did that manually - at least once I discovered it leaves them enabled the whole time the app's running, which means a significant battery hit on the GPS.
Looking at some of the apps Adobe are showcasing - it appears they're all around 10mb, which suggests they're including all the runtime bits in there.
But in Rails land, there have been significant changes over the last two years in addressing a number of the issues.
Of course, let's not forget that Rails 3.0 (which is where the merge with Merb will be accomplished) will give Rails more of the points he highlighted in that article.
I'd love to see a balanced comparison using more up to date versions and see how it fares...