What is the distinction you want me to make? That it has a different icon in your OS task bar?
> If Spotify followed through with your advice, those users should not be offered a desktop app at all, they should be forced to only use the website and have their browser drain the battery instead.
My argument is that by sharing resources with the browser they're running anyway, that the battery/CPU/RAM drain will be reduced. A browser is a lot of overhead and using less browsers at once is always good.
> You're effectively arguing for less choice when a native app is not an option. That doesn't make sense to me.
The reason is that these browser wrappers are marketed deceptively, so users aren't equipped to make an informed decision about whether to use them.
Users generally expect that when they download a desktop application, that it's native, has minimal overhead and performs well. Browser-wrappers don't meet these expectations. Users don't realise they're downloading an extra browser and all the overhead it entails.
If users realised that these were just another browser that can only open one website, I'm sure their feelings would be substantially different.
They think that when they download Spotify, it's going to perform like VLC or Winamp and it absolutely doesn't.