The preference for apps is a learned behavior, not something fundamental. The vast majority of people with real understanding would prefer the web
PWAs are only as good of a user experience as the developer programs it to be. The average local TV news affiliate website spends 5MB-20MB of bandwidth within a minute of downloading 1 page. My last iOS app was only 5MB shipped and only consumes a few KB of bandwidth per session.
There are massive convenience features that native apps support which aren’t available to browser APIs. Auth, payments, notifications, parental controls, power efficiency, and perhaps security and privacy (depending on how prevalent analytics/ tracking/ advertising libraries are on native apps).
A well crafted PWA can compete on most features with a well crafted app, but ultimately the App Store review process means native apps have a decently high floor, whereas PWAs have zero floor.
This is a very strange argument to make, the exact same applies to "native" apps. Every app "is only as good of a user experience as the developer programs it to be". There are countless of "native" apps on iOS like "wallpaper" apps that drain the battery, consume absurd bandwidth and have outright scammy business models which App Store "review" just lets pass (because Apple gets a cut of the scam!).
>There are massive convenience features that native apps support which aren’t available to browser APIs. Auth, payments, notifications, parental controls, power efficiency, and perhaps security and privacy (depending on how prevalent analytics/ tracking/ advertising libraries are on native apps).
Auth? https://whatpwacando.today/authentication
Payments? https://whatpwacando.today/payment
Notifications? https://whatpwacando.today/notifications
Parental Controls? Use Web Content Restrictions.
Power efficiency? If JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation were universally allowed for all web browsers and PWAs on iOS, it would be a complete game-changer, dramatically closing the performance and power efficiency gap with native apps. (see above why Apple actively sabotages PWAs)
Security and Privacy? PWAs benefit from the OS's sandbox and its own sandbox
>A well crafted PWA can compete on most features with a well crafted app, but ultimately the App Store review process means native apps have a decently high floor, whereas PWAs have zero floor.
You can't even compare the App Store review to someone actively going on e.g. Pinterest.com and clicking on install PWA. The user has already reviewed and decided that it's an app worth installing. Finally, the App Store "review process" is a bad joke, not only because it is slow, inefficient and often arbitrary, but because it fails to even filter out the most obvious of scams:
"Apple claims its App Store is carefully curated so that only the best apps get through. The truth is, the App Store is littered with scams" -https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/06/apple-a...
"The widely used Apple App Store has become a minefield of scam apps. While several scam apps have been removed by Apple, it seems they’ve only acted when directly called out on social media. Despite the removal of some scam apps, Apple has not yet acted to ban the guilty app developers from the app store."
https://mccunewright.com/scam-apps-sold-on-the-apple-app-sto...
Which is the point I was making. The parent and gp were making the argument that PWAs were positively better than native apps, which I was pushing back on.
None of your links disagree with my points, except the last one which suffers from survivor bias.
> There are massive convenience features that native apps support which aren’t available to browser APIs. Auth, payments, notifications, parental controls, power efficiency, and perhaps security and privacy...
Bad software is bad software. "Native" apps can be bad too.
Most of the difference you see is intentionally created by Apple, after they pivoted away from using web apps on phones.