That statement doesn't seem to make sense to me since Apple store's limitations make PWA's relatively more interesting on Apple devices than they would be on Android -- an existing application is not inferior to a non-existent one. On Android you can just serve the native applications yourself if Google doesn't like them. On Apple you can't so web application it is.
PWAs are here to stay.
The question just revolves around how integral an app is to the business. Online banking probably requires an app. A restaurant that offers online ordering probably does not. A video game requires an app. An online encyclopedia does not.
If your statement was true, there wouldn’t have to be any complaints about Apples ‘walled garden’ because there is no ‘walled garden’ for PWAs.
The word users tend to have for non-native apps isn't about performance or such, it's about UX.
That word is 'shit'.
Nearly every single PWA developer thinks about how brilliant it is that they can write for two platforms at once but forgets that it means that you ALSO have to do every single last bit of legwork that Apple and Google did for you to give a good, correct-feeling UX on mobile and that the more you do the more you pay that performance cost and build yourself a tech debt prison. And don't get me started on the nightmare that is Ionic and Angular.
PWAs absolutely have their place: Apps that you might want to use...sometimes.. with notifications. That's it. Nothing more makes any sense.
No sitting around waiting to download and install updates. No corporate phone-wiping security policies. All the features that mattered, even if Safari didn't look quite as nice and missed one or two.
PWA vs native app doesn't matter at all to the competition, they are gonna be there regardless (esp. B2B scenarios). Whether a website or app works better for B2C is really highly market dependent.
Probably they made the choice after listening to an opinionated story about ‘sitting around waiting for updates’. Which nobody does, of course, because if you mind that you just turn on automatic background updates.
At least in this story Safari is good enough to have the features that matter. The world is safe.
As for safari, we supported IE11, chrome, Firefox, mobile / android chrome, desktop and mobile safari. Safari easily added about 10% to our development budget, and safari users got a downgraded experience in certain cases. Not ideal, but close enough for me to not feel bad calling it the "new IE" (and yeah, I remember developing sites for IE 5.5 and 6).
Edit: speaking of auto updates, I have it turned on myself, and just yesterday had to wait around to update my mobile bank app to virtually deposit a check- log in, get kicked out to update, wait to download and install, then log in again before I could proceed. Not sure why, but auto update isn't a cure-all.
There's tons of mobile apps that never needed to be anything other than desktop sites honestly. Facebook, actually, is a perfect example.
That said, an app for learning as an example should actually have a very different mobile experience as a user wont want hour-long study sessions on the subway (or in line at a subway restaurant.)
I should have specified B2B in my original comment though, B2C I have no experience in.
How about people publish their catalog, and then, like, 3 or 4 interoperable "shopper" apps (with preferably at least one developed in the open) can emerge to do the heavy lifting? The way it works now, where Amazon and O'Reilly and AutoZone all have to hire for developers mirrors the ridiculousness of the streaming media platforms, where just because Amazon or Disney+ or whoever has the content and Netflix doesn't, people act as if it makes complete sense that we should have to enter their dumb app and use that provider's shitty title browser and video player, instead of the user picking the app that works the way they want and using it to play from whichever catalog has the content they need.
We had whole versions where it was basically stuffed, and even in the recent versions, I'm getting random errors where it just refuses to write to disk.
If they don't want to implement PWA, fine, their walled garden and wall that, claim it's for privacy etc etc. just don't half ass all the APIs around it then! Leave them out!
A co-worker asked me "uh, why does the app use 120GB for indexeddb?"
Wildest bug I've ever had to deal with. Unfortunately it wasn't even just a safari issue.
Yeah, I get that it doesn't make sense for Apple, business wise -- which is why they are not doing it. But it sure would make sense to developers.
Google's PWA agenda (displace native apps with web apps) is in opposition to Apple's (displace web apps with native apps) on iOS.
Apple's business interests are in opposition to PWAs, and Apple would also make the same argument you are citing that native apps offer a better user experience, performance per watt, privacy, security, etc..
However, mobile Safari can support something like Amazon Luna, so it can sidestep the app store to some extent as far as games are concerned.
Name a place where safari is being innovative on the web.