Ask yourself the same question about Native Apps. Why should any Native App be allowed to store data permanently. The answer to that question is the same for Web Apps.
Web Apps can be every bit as capable as Native Apps except with security and privacy built in. For consumers, businesses and competition, Native Apps need to be relegated to to apps that require cutting edge use cases
2. You (as a user) lack autonomy or control over them.
3. While built on "free and open technology", they are not by design.
4. Is totally subject to the whems, taxes, and control of the gatekeeper (the app developer)
Web applications have demonstratively made the experience worse for users without them knowing it. And web app developers know this intrinsically and refuse to acknowledge it.
2. Not any more than native apps.
3. I guess.. Not sure that matters though..
4. Not any more than native apps. But what mtomweb refers to is obviously the app stores which act as gate keepers, which web apps are not subject to.
>Web applications have demonstratively made the experience worse for users without them knowing it. And web app developers know this intrinsically and refuse to acknowledge it.
What? Not in my opinion, they haven't.
2. You have far more control over Web Apps than Native Apps. The permissions are more granular + via your user agent (browser) you can change privacy and security settings and install extensions to change the behaviour further.
This is not available on native.
3. We're not advocating for "free" apps (App Developers need to make a living too), We're advocating for free and open web tech.
4. Having hundreds of thousands of competing App Developers is not an issue, having 2/3 gatekeepers controlling and extracting rents is.
5. Web Applications only have to be written once, which will result in BETTER products. There's a reason Adobe, Microsoft and many other companies are all investing in Web Apps.
Unless the app is open source why would it matter to me if it is build on free and open technology?
I would say per definition a webapp is less free than a native app as its under the control of the server operator and not running locally. I know iOS have somewhat webified apps to let them control if people can run them but the old idea of the native app would be entirely under the control of the user, even if its closed source.
I also dont think a web app can do privacy as well as a native app. A native app you can firewalled off from network access while with a web app you are at the mercy of the developer and server operator.
No, its so they can better get money out of the end users. A user cant keep using their 5 year old copy of XYZ, they have to pay every month or they will be cut off from the application.
How to balance that desire with advertisers' desire to track users is of course a difficult question.
They'll make you submit your PWA for app store review, sign your asset and JS bundles so all other's won't load, make you support "Web IAP", and go through review again every time you want to update your bundle.
Hitching your "I want to be be free of Apple's platform control" to "I want PWA's" is a recipe for disappointment.
But it would be nice if the user could make this setting on a per-webapp basis.
So much of the software industry has been consolidated into the hands of a few monopolies. Web, with all of its horrible problems, is pretty much the only democratic platform we have left, and even it is constantly being eaten away by these monopolies.
It's your device. If you want a website to be able to store data permanently on it, it is your choice. Not apple's. Not google's. Fucking yours.