Do App Store policies harm developers? Is the web a credible alternative?

> Apple finally acknowledged the name "Progressive Web App" and the platform as an alternative to the App Store. It's not how we all were expecting this to happen, but at least it's a start. No one from the WebKit and Safari teams is talking about PWAs; Apple's lawyers defined PWAs and their compatibility on iOS and iPadOS as evidence against App Store monopoly to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

https://firt.dev/ios-14.5/#progressive-web-apps-on-ios-14.5 - linked to from the third "fact" listed at the start of the article.

(Or at least, I was thinking that an article such as this one needed to be written when I read the above.)

Presumably, the ACCC and similar bodies around the world will be looking for evidence as to whether this claim is true. While it's generally known among front-end developers that Safari is the reason PWA's on iOS haven't really been feasible for a long time, it wasn't clearly articulated anywhere.

Now the lawyers will have this article to refer to as evidence. Hopefully it will pressure Apple to at least make PWA's more viable on iOS, even if just as an argument for their lawyers.