There's some barrier of entry(buy an account and create documents describing your app) to have a mobile app, with PWA it will be removed and you will have every single website trying to make you "install" their web app, just like every single website is trying to take your e-mail address or make you create an account.
The app experience is almost always better because you always have more screen real estate, higher performance, better persistence and the developer has more opportunities to monetise you which eases the need to shove all the adds technologically possible into your face before you leave and never come back.
Visiting a new website in 2021 has the following installation process:
0) click a link
1) download the website. Websites are bloated these days, things jump around until you download and execute a few MB of JS, CSS, HTML and so on.
2) accept/deny tracking(usually designed to trick you into accepting)
3) accept/deny subscribing to newsletters(usually the skip button is obscured)
4) try to figure out what is this all about, trying to distinguish site element from ads
5) if you still want to continue you probably will need to create an account for anything that's beyond an article. Many times, you will need to create an account even for an article
6) after all that jazz you can actually try out the app/website or consume the article
7) if you like what you see, you need to bookmark/add to home screen
An app experiance is something like this:
0) click a link
1) see screenshots and explanation of what this app is all about, accompanied with reviews and ratings
3) if you like what you se, tap install, make a fingerprint scan or a face scan to download and open the app
4) try out the app. if you like it, it will be on your homescreen to use again. if you don't like it, you can delete it from the same place.
For both cases, any use hardware or system API you will get about the same popup asking you to give access to location/microphone/camera/bluetooth. For the mobile app the experience of managing it will be easier since it will have standardised settings in the device settings and you know the permissions are revoked when you delete the app.
For web apps you don't have an uninstall process. You need to dive into browser settings to remove history, cookies etc.
What barrier of entry? We've already had notifications on the web for 6 years, and the experience isn't what you describe. It's far more common for me to run into a website asking me to install a native app than it is for me to see websites asking to display notifications. Nobody wants to be forced to install a native app to order a pizza or check their bank balance. It's better if we can do those things on a website without installing an entire application.
> The app experience is almost always better
Strong disagree. Even on iOS native apps are more invasive and have fewer privacy controls than a website does. That's why all of these websites want you to install apps. Facebook isn't asking you to install their app because it'll be a better experience for you, they're asking you to install their app because then they can request contact permissions.
> 0) [...] 1) [...] 2) [...] etc...
This is just nonsense. You're arguing that configuring a browser to default-deny permission prompts is a worse experience than getting badgered to install a completely separate application every single time you visit Reddit.
And to your point on advertising, this is a good reason to have an app environment that supports competent adblocking. Neither Safari nor iOS provides APIs to do that for websites or for native apps.
This all kind of boils down to, you have an environment with less sandboxing, less privacy, less granular permissions, and a longer install process (visit a site, switch apps, download and install a new app, switch apps again, then uninstall and clean up when you're done); but it's OK because the process of building an app is so cumbersome that a lot of businesses won't bother? This may not be the persuasive argument you think it is.
I mean, you can tell me all you want that notification prompts are worse than the current system of websites constantly asking to exit the website and install a new thing that gives them native file access to my phone, but... I browse the mobile web. I know what the mobile web is like from day-to-day experience, notification prompts are not the reason that the mobile Reddit website is annoying to use.
It's interesting that the sites that you'd expect to use notifications tend to not be the ones actually offering them. Webmail? Reddit? HN? Obvious notification cases. Legitimate ecommerce? I could see prompting for "let us send order update notifications after purchase." Don't see it there though.
Instead, I see a lot of "enable notifications to prove you're not a robot" scam fake-CAPTCHAs and a lot of newspaper/TV/media sites asking for it. Just because I want to read one article doesn't mean I'm naturally after an update every time you post anything else.
The app experience is almost always better because you always have more screen real estate, higher performance, better persistence and the developer has more opportunities to monetise you which eases the need to shove all the adds technologically possible into your face before you leave and never come back.
Visiting a new website in 2021 has the following installation process:
0) click a link
1) download the website. Websites are bloated these days, things jump around until you download and execute a few MB of JS, CSS, HTML and so on.
2) accept/deny tracking(usually designed to trick you into accepting)
3) accept/deny subscribing to newsletters(usually the skip button is obscured)
4) try to figure out what is this all about, trying to distinguish site element from ads
5) if you still want to continue you probably will need to create an account for anything that's beyond an article. Many times, you will need to create an account even for an article
6) after all that jazz you can actually try out the app/website or consume the article
7) if you like what you see, you need to bookmark/add to home screen
An app experiance is something like this:
0) click a link
1) see screenshots and explanation of what this app is all about, accompanied with reviews and ratings
3) if you like what you se, tap install, make a fingerprint scan or a face scan to download and open the app
4) try out the app. if you like it, it will be on your homescreen to use again. if you don't like it, you can delete it from the same place.
For both cases, any use hardware or system API you will get about the same popup asking you to give access to location/microphone/camera/bluetooth. For the mobile app the experience of managing it will be easier since it will have standardised settings in the device settings and you know the permissions are revoked when you delete the app.
For web apps you don't have an uninstall process. You need to dive into browser settings to remove history, cookies etc.