[hn_throwaway_99]

> but I now think native applications on smartphones was a mistake.

That seems a bit like rose-colored glasses. PWAs only really became viable in the past couple years (especially on iPhones when push notifications only were made available to PWAs in the last year), and even if you ignore Apple dragging it's feet, it's hard for me to imagine another scenario where all the hardware-based APIs (e.g. access to camera, media streaming, various sensors, in addition to push) didn't come out in native apps first before they were made available in the browser.