Apple supporting PWA (Progressive Web Apps) is hugely important because it enables a future where web apps can natively support browser, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, and mobile iPhone/Android/Windows native mobile with a single codebase of open technologies.
Why is that important? By fragmenting development effort, the overall product isn't as good on any platform.
There's an app I'm making on the side to keep track of your contacts (like a personal customer management system). This needs to store all your contacts offline, because it'd be too much friction to load everyone you've ever taken notes on over the network every time you open the app.
Right now, the only way for me to accomplish that on iOS is to make a native app. This means I had to learn an entirely new technology stack (React Native and XCode), completely rewrite my views, tie everything into my backend, and go through Apple's Byzantine approval process (which I still haven't done because I can't figure out why my app compiles and runs locally but complains about libraries not being linked when I try to archive it to upload to the app store).
This is unnecessary duplication of work that could've been spent writing new features, makes it harder to add new front-end features in the future (because now they have to be added in two places), and adds a huge lag in the time it takes me to push changes to the iOS client (weeks, vs. the seconds it takes to push a change to the web client).
If apple supported PWA, I would've spent my time making the database keep a local syncing copy on the browser (with minimongo or pouchdb), and then every platform would've benefited from faster page loads and offline syncing.
Until Apple adds PWA support, I can't make as good stuff, and people can't use the better stuff.
Why after over 30 years of experiencing cross platform "write once run anywhere* technologies do developers still think that's the best user experience? Yes it makes life easier for the developer but it's rarely best for the user.
In the end, Apple got what they wanted. I needed a feature that PWA's can give me - but Apple hasn't added support for them in mobile safari, so I paid the $100 to get access to the app store, and was forced to learn a completely different language.
Yes, the end product has an arguably better and 'native-like' experience, but it took me longer to do and it is lacking some of the features that I could have rolled out if I was able to use PWA's. And it would have worked on Android out of the box as well.
I don't regret learning React Native. It was actually really, really fun. The community is great, and being able to write native apps now feels really good.
But its the principal of the matter. Holding back innovation for your company's own selfish reasons is a shitty thing to do.
So am I as an end user suppose to be upset that you were forced to make a better product.
Holding back innovation for the company's selfish reasons?
Back in 2008 they said the same thing about Apple not supporting Flash and Java.
If anyone is being selfish to try foist cross platform apps that you admitted weren't as good, it isn't Apple.