So by this author’s estimation, the Apple App Store is the worst and the Microsoft App Store is the best. I can tell him that from the user’s perspective, it’s the exact opposite, and I have exactly one app from Microsoft and hundreds from Apple.
The winner is Google.
One of the main reasons for that is, Google tries to make everything in the OS available from standard JavaScript. Their platform is web friendly. For example, want to display the currently playing song info and album art on the lock screen? They submitted a new web standard for that.
The amount of standard APIs developed in JS are nowhere near native APIs, also JS has barely gotten to the point of good enough for native development, whereas, mobile platforms have had 10 years of mature development.
It's quite the fantasy to pretend that PWAs can offer the user anything better than a native experience at this point.
APIs: Yes, Google is improving the situation -- making more and more common OS APIs exposed to standard web interfaces. Meanwhile, Cordova is letting web devs access native functionality that the platform vendors don't expose. The story isn't perfect, but it's actually quite impressive even now.
Web apps: they offer all kinds of things native apps can't. Native apps require install. Native apps must go through approval process for every update. Native apps are restricted in what they can publish on the app store. Native apps are subject to the censorial whims of a single corporation (or government forcing that single corporation). Native apps only work on a single platform; the web works everywhere.
There are lots of wins for web apps. And I think PWAs only increase those wins.