[rchaud]

To paraphrase the article: with the Google-Apple mobile duopoly, consumers are stuck between a rock (web apps) and a hard place (native apps).

It isn't in Apple's interest to allow web apps on iOS to have feature parity with native apps, because that's where Apple's moat is.

It isn't in Google's interest to allow mobile web browsers the freedom to behave like desktop browsers (extensions and filesystem APIs), because web ads are how Google establishes its moat.

The solution seems obvious; A phone with a barebones OS that can run a desktop-class browser. This is what the MokoPhone and Nokia N900 tried many years ago. Even Palm called its mobile offering WebOS, because they knew that competing via app store counts was a dead end.

[PaulHoule]

I’d say Safari is not bad at all on an iPad. I remember a lot of people carping because of bad ideas from PWAs not being implemented (spam spamifications, half-baked rube goldberg schemes that accomplish half of what Netscape Netcaster did back in the day…) but really all the real web apps and even demos like visualization of NeRF models work on my iPad.

[EarlKing]

> spam spamifications

As much as I dislike notifications, they're becoming a necessity in a world of decommoditized email. If I could know that my mail would actually get through when I send it to a willing recipient (as opposed to the almighty Google System Lords deciding that my mail should be dropped because their chicken entrails said it looked like spam that day) then there'd be no need to reinvent email as notifications... but here we are.

[PaulHoule]

One of the drivers for email newsletters, ironically, is that bloggers don't trust Google to send visitors their way repeatedly, so they harass their users incessantly hoping to bypass the Google search monopoly although this runs headlong into the Google email monopoly.

To be fair though I remember working for firms that were struggling mightily to deliver mail to AOL in 2005.

[ibeckermayer]

“Spam spamifications” as in, notifications?

Good luck building a competitive direct messaging client without “spam spamifications”.

PWAs aren’t ideal, but building to a single platform with different screen sizes is far more efficient and achievable for upstarts than building multiple separate apps in different languages targeting multiple platforms. Arbitrarily limiting features like “spam spamifications” just gives an arbitrary advantage to the well funded over the independent and bootstrapped.

[AmpsterMan]

Would the librem line of phones be an early attempt at what you describe?

[rchaud]

No, because they are designed for developers and privacy nuts first, not average customers. Devices like this will never achieve a level of polish necessary for general uptake. Heck, the Moko and N900 died precisely because they were too niche to justify the price.