> Here are a list of things you still can’t do with mobile safari due to Apple’s refusal to support them:
>
> Create an app loading screen
> Use push notifications
> Add offline support
> Create an initial app UI to load instantly
> Prompt installation to the home screen through browser-guided dialog
Why do I want these things, as a user. App loading screens?
I love the web. I love hyperlinks, text and images. The web of connections that lead you to information. Everything in that list is detrimental to a good experience on the web.
I don't want push notifications, I barely enable them for native apps. And it bugs the hell out of me when every second website in desktop Safari prompts to send me push notifications. No. Why would I want this on mobile?
Same thing with the home screen. I love the fact that the address bar in my web browser is my history, my reminders, my bookmarks, my open tabs. I start typing what I want and I'm there. Finding native apps on my home screen is only just getting to the same place with Spotlight, why would I want to make the web worse by sticking icons for pages on my home screen?
And browser-guided dialogs to put more icons on my home screen? Seriously?
This author's post is a great argument against web apps on mobile.
You can too, if that's how you want to consume the web. That's the beauty of it - it allows for that by design.
What I don't like is the position you are taking that "because I only want to consume the web that way, the Web itself should be hamstrung to my limited view of how it should work." There is no good reason - when the capability exists - that the Web as a platform should be chaste with things like Offline-first and even push messages (which IMHO are a big privacy win over the current mode of getting updates about things you're interested in, because you can't ungive someone your email address but you can easily turn off notification channels.) "Because that's not the way I want to consume the web" is not a good enough reason to deny the rest of us who want to see the Web continue as a modern and relevant platform. If you feel like shouting "get off my lawn" at the kids using those things, just flip off JS.
"Because that's not the way I want to develop" is not a good enough reason to increase complexity, security footprint, and unintended side effects.
I think the point is rather that single-codebase "productivity apps" that satisfy basic modern experience expectations (like "I could run it offline") are not possible elsewhere - but they should be. And they would be, if some browser vendors cared about the web more than their walled garden.
Also, the thing about expanding the Open Web Platform is that the new features that are available to me don't take anything away from you if you don't want to use them. Keep making static sites if that's what suits your purpose and don't register any ServiceWorkers or any other things you consider "bloat". (As an aside - As fashionable as it has become to moan about Web "bloat" let's strive to remember that the Web standards are debated and governed by committees of consummate experts mostly in the open.) If we expand the Web platform we can both develop "the way we want" (assuming you want to keep doing things the way you have and I want to use new features).
Why?
"Also, the thing about expanding the Open Web Platform is that the new features that are available to me don't take anything away from you if you don't want to use them. "
As a user, they do. If you go whole hog on the PWA stuff, then I no longer have the regular website you used to have.