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by ChrisKingWebDev 1951 days ago
There is a major point missing from the cons list about PWAs. Most people don't know what they are and it's a major pain to install them on iOS.

I'm at the point where I want to start monetizing an app I have, but realistically I have to use iOS In App Purchases. If I told the average person on the street that my app is a PWA and they can install it on their home page, they wouldn't know what to do.
2 comments
kevincox 1951 days ago
This is fairly easy to resolve by packing up your PWA and submitting to the various stores. Bing will even detect and automatically add "popular PWAs" to the Microsoft store.

So sure, you still end up paying the Apple/Google tax for discovery (and the Apple tax for looking like an app instead of a webpage) but it gets you that discovery you want and you only need to maintain a single codebase.

And example is my app which I packaged up using https://www.pwabuilder.com/. It was just a couple of clicks to publish to the Play Store. It will look as pretty as you make it and most users won't realize that it isn't a "native" app. Honestly the biggest issue is that it doesn't download the app until the first launch. (Although you can use different tooling to include a copy of the site in the app)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.player_one...

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ChrisKingWebDev 1950 days ago
Does building a PWA this way support In App Purchases? I would much prefer keeping my app as a PWA, or in my case, a managed Expo React Native app. But eventually I'll have to break it apart to support IAP.
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ksec 1951 days ago
Exactly this. Supporter of PWA often look at things from a Developer and Technology prospective.

If you ask an average person, does he care is that "thing" is written in HTML/JS, Assembly, Fortran, Ada / Pascal or Visual Basic?

I am moving more towards supportive of PWA given the current issues with Apple, But that doesn't change the fact even the best PWA isn't as smooth as a Native App.

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theabbie 1946 days ago
Not being smooth is not a disadvantage of PWA but sign of bad Developer. PWA can be made as seemless as a native app, there are many examples of PWA for that. People still prefer native apps for various reasons. This will change in future.
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