Apple is also working against itself in that department. As far as I know a webapp does not need to be approved by Apple to go live.
Apple sees App Store apps, and web apps as having different advantages, and it is in their interest to have the best platform for both.
It’s not just me saying this, they keep saying it too, and proving it by investing in making web apps run better.
Believe whatever you like.
But this means you are also choosing to ignore absolutely enormous investments at every level of the stack that they have made to increase web performance, adopt standards and improve web user experience.
Disclosure: I work at Google on JS libraries, and at one point was in the Chrome org, but my opinions are my own.
You'll probably know better than me but Apple's work on Webkit was presumably worthwhile enough for Google to fork it into Blink (no problem with that but maybe worth acknowledging that fact).
Google forked Blink because for whatever reason they were unsatisfied with the state of Webkit -- nominally because they wanted to take a different approach to multi-process, but there may have been other technological and project direction/pace disagreements. Since then, a number of browsers have switched from Webkit to Blink/Chromium as their engine, and arguably Safari is falling behind on new features and overall quality (weird quirks that require web devs to work around).
If Apple's focus is on getting better power consumption and memory use (esp on mobile) then that's still investing and arguably that does as much if not more for users and the web than adding more features.
PS Let's not forget that Apple are still standing behind WebKit when Microsoft have given up on their own rendering engine so let's give them some credit for helping to avoid a Chrome only web.
It’s hardly obvious that this is best for users in the long run.
I point this out not to say it’s wrong for them to attempt this, but because it makes no sense to use Google’s strategic decisions as evidence of Apple’s intentions or investment.
The method to pin a webapp to the home screen is substantially worse than it used to be.
There was a period where javascript running in Safari ran significantly faster than javascript running in a webapp opened from the home screen, or in any other app opening a web view. Is that still the case, or did they decide to share that function?
Think we can't ignore that the iOS install base has been larger than the MacOS install base. Start looking at it that way and the iOS way of doing things is the norm in the eyes of Apple and MacOS is the odd one out.
Could be, but as far as the new cross platform frameworks are shaping up right now it looks like their strategy is slightly different. Apple is seemingly creating a developer ecosystem to loosley describe interfaces and share them between platforms while they ultimately decide how your UI is rendered. Maybe you're right and one day that means flicking a switch and everything is unified. I also look at something like iPadOS for instance which started as extremely similar to iOS and has now diverged and become it's own thing, different to both the Mac and iPhone.
There should be limits on this. It's sad to be the baby outside the window, drenched in bathwater.
What you are describing is taking this even further in the direction of an information appliance.
I am unconvinced that there is any benefit that your model provides that Apple does not already.
You can already just buy a Mac with AppleCare and install MS office from the App Store.
People may want their choices to be simplified, but they are also going to need to be able to use whatever important new thing comes along. E.g. Zoom or Slack.
I know people who upgrade their Mac every time there is a speed bump and just sell the old one. They would presumably be candidates for this.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this.
I just don’t see any reason Apple would tie the leased hardware to a limited software bundle.