Well, Apple's behaviour is impacting all this by forcing companies to develop native apps instead of web apps. Web apps (could) work anywhere, and cost a fraction of the cost of native apps.
In-app purchases and App Store purchases in general are already scraping the bottom of the barrel, we’re talking about the difference between $9.99 & <$7 at the higher end assuming everything works out. That absolutely matters, but much more to the sellers than the users.
We can imagine the thousands of needlessly native apps with a platform mandated 30% surcharge being transported onto the open web and into user devices free of interference. Hardware accelerated IG like filters writing to local disk in the background at 60fps, DRM protected 4k streaming with cheaper monthly subs, hobbyist forum sites on the home screen with PMs and replies pushing notifications alongside FB, the dream.
But Abuelita is going to experience the millions of individual pages relying exclusively on advertising revenue already twisted and contorted into profitable positions being given the green light for Notifications, Geolocation, Bluetooth, NFC, Network Info, Ambient Light, Idleness, Proximity APIs etc while she’s just trying to read about how Joe Biden is destroying the fabric of America.
If "Add to Homescreen" wasn't added in the pre-AppStore era, I don't think it'd happen. This feature has clearly been mothballed. Homescreen web apps were given a second-rate build of WebKit that has been been consistently slower and buggier than standalone Safari (I don't know if they've fixed it recently. Homescreen webapps that I worked on all gave in to the AppStore eventually).
Apple has the same fear as Microsoft had that powerful Web apps will make their native platform unnecessary. Microsoft made a mistake of abandoning Internet Explorer 6 entirely. Apple is smart enough to keep user-facing parts of their browser high quality, and only drag their feet on more advanced platform features. They forbid other browser engines, which magically makes Safari appear as technically capable as every other iOS browser.
> The fact that Apple refuses to implement basic features in mobile Safari that Firefox and Chrome have had for years now, and the fact that they refuse to allow other browser engines on iOS is the reason why we can't have nice things like progressive web apps.
> I recently worked on a health app related to the COVID pandemic. The most common use case would be served really well by a PWA, and as such, there's no reason users would need to install an app on their phones to access the web app's full set of features.
> Despite the web app working perfectly on Android and across Windows, Linux and macOS without native integration, we now must dedicate time and resources to develop an additional iOS app just so iOS users, which over half of Americans are, aren't left out.
> This is an expensive endeavor time-wise and money-wise, during a pandemic where time is of the essence and resources are stretched thin. It shouldn't be this way, but it is.
Another recent one, a customer on iOS 12 did not understand why he couldn't save a file generated on the device to his phone. I told him it's not possible, but he can save it to iCloud (without a correct name though). I got told off about how bad we must be not to support such a basic feature. Don't ask me mate.
Another problem is that small problems affecting a large number of people do not have much vocal support, while their costs are still enormous. (As compared to problems that affect a minority a lot.)
Safari is okay at ad blocking but it can't do nearly as much as Firefox Mobile with uBlock, and Apple doesn't seem at all interested in improving it.