Maybe because it's a business app, and the loading screen checks whether you are on intranet (corp wifi) or not.
> I don't want push notifications, I barely enable them for native apps.
I would enable them for important apps (eg. business apps), so I want the technology, but I absolutely hate the popups on news sites for notifications.
So nobody wants that on mobile, but they still want to be able to use notifications when they start using an app from which they want to get notifications. It's that simple.
Let's say a fitness app. Let's say a basic simple fucking calendar app. Or a whatever run of the mill business workflow shit app, that requires your attention from time to time. And it'd be easier if there were no need to build for every fucking platform.
> why would I want to make the web worse by sticking icons for pages on my home screen?
Maybe people have great spatial memory (I like organizing icons on my home screen on Android), maybe you don't want to type?
> And browser-guided dialogs to put more icons on my home screen? Seriously?
Yeah. Consistent UX and security. Why not? It can be OS provided.
Yeah I wouldn't have been a Mac or iOS user if I wasn't anal about every single app on my system being a good citizen. From the simple fucking calendar app, fitness app, or whatever. I expect the developers of those apps to be as passionate about the pixels I interact with as I am.
Attention to detail is a reason these platforms are so loved. Encouraging "simple fucking calendar" apps to disregard the platform in their design is exactly the opposite reason I chose this platform to begin with.
> And it'd be easier if there were no need to build for every fucking platform.
It's easier to build badly for every platform. But no matter what technology stack you choose, if you want to build well for every platform then you are in for a lot of work. Cross platform is not going to make it easier because writing code is not the hard part.
I want to be passionate, but - let's say - I know CSS/HTML/Java and a bit of C#, and so while I could spend time building an Android app and maybe fiddle a bit with a Windows Phone app, but there's no way in hell that I want to venture into OS X territory, ObjectiveC creeps me out more than Haskell and f#, so I can't. (Okay, Swift is nice, but I'm still not allowed in the closed garden, because I don't have access to Xcode.)
I would gladly pay the 100 USD for the Apple Store Developer privilege if I'd get to use nice Web APIs. It can be whitelisted on the Store settings, and it can even integrate into the store, that'd be almost better.