Software has been increasing in size over time since the beginning of software. This will never change. It goes hand in hand with why hardware keeps getting bigger capacity too. I agree that some of it is bloat, but some of it is more features and content too. When the OS adds a little, and the libraries add a little, and the apps add a little, the downloads get more than a little bigger, but it can be a side-effect of everyone adding useful features at every level.

There will always be a hardware limit, so if you install apps up to your limit, you will eventually have to delete some of them, no matter how small the apps are and no matter how big your phone's memory capacity is. You can't entirely blame that on developers, it's your budget to deal with. You can buy a bigger phone or install fewer apps. I like to keep a good 20-30% of my memory free just so things I depend on have room to grow.

You also have the option to swap out apps continually. It'd be a pain in the ass for sure, but if the least important app on your phone that you had to delete is really one you couldn't live without, you have the option to delete something else and re-install it, and then swap back later.

Network connections can be artificially limited (even to localhost): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/130354/how-do-i-simulate...

To simulate a lower-spec machine, you can just run some resource-hungry processes in the background.

The problem is of course that almost nobody bothers to run these tests unless they already care about performance on low-end devices.

So you think the world is sad?

No, no one does. Any more than they cast nets to catch wishes, phone their mums every time they step on a crack to make sure that her back is okay etc. etc.

It's an expression, an idiom, even.