[dylan604]

Isn't the main purpose of a native app access to data collection that a browser would not have access? That way they can make money on that data collection?

Am I just too cynical here?

[aqfamnzc]

Many other benefits to the company: (not necessarily for the user)

* Persistent shortcut button on device's launcher

* Notifications to pull user back into app to consume content, spend money, view ads

* Data collection like you say

* Uniquely identify user w/ device identifiers

* No browser UI and quirks

* Persistent storage on user's device

[kitsunesoba]

On the dev side of things, a huge advantage of using the native SDK is that you’re not stuck with the downsides of the web’s “bring your own everything” approach. You’ve get an expansive set of capable UI widgets and frameworks for everything imaginable that are battle-tested and opinionated with there being a well supported “happy path” for just about any task.

Additionally many of the APIs are mature and haven’t changed significantly in a while, which means the body of relevant reference material online is huge — it’s not necessarily outdated just because it’s a couple years old, predating [X buzzword feature] getting added to [Y trendy JS framework] and turning popular convention upside down for the fiftieth time.

Well, that’s how it on iOS at least. It’s more murky on Android because Android Framework is kind of a mess, but it still has some advantages over the web.

[cglong]

All of those are possible with PWAs except #5, and I'd argue that having completely different SDKs for each platform is much worse :(

[hutzlibu]

A pwa can only track you, as long as it is running and depending on the browser, has focus.

A native app can track you all the time.

Also, PWAs on apple have only "persistent" storage for 7 days.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/710157

[edgyquant]

Notifications are not. Yea the browser technically provides them but no one allows this (nor should they)

[cglong]

Lyft has a PWA, which IMO is a really good use case for browser-based notifications.

[EGreg]

Unique identification is no longer possible thanks to the 7 day cap on script writeable storage.

Notifications are coming in 2023.

But the big one — access to the address book picker - is still behind an Experimental flag !!

[cokeandpepsi]

also avoids adblock

[threeseed]

Mobile web apps have existed for decades.

It simply comes down to the fact that the user experience is not as good as native.

And you can't run a successful business without making your users happy.

[jacobsenscott]

This isn't true for 99% of business out there. Almost every mobile app is worse than its website in a mobile browser because most business can't afford a web dev team, an android dev team, and an ios dev team. The exceptions are the few apps built by the mega-corps that have the resources to build a good mobile app. Nobody want's to install some broken app with a fraction of the functionality of the web site, but that's what 99% of the apps in the app store are.

[friedman23]

It's only not as good because web is purposefully crippled.