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Comment by over_byte | Hacker News Reader

It isn't about abandoning the app stores, it's about offering reasonable alternatives, whether they be alternative app stores or first class web apps. There's definitely reasons to create native apps, which is why Apple created the AppStore in the first place (we all know that when the iPhone launched, it was only web apps), heavy graphics games being a big one, but simply removing existing functionality in response to being forced to allow these alternatives is just Apple throwing the dummy out of the pram.

For the record, Google has always allowed alternative app stores, browser engines and PWAs and has not suffered much in terms of financial loss but they are used to playing on the open web whereas Apple's financial model is more like Microsoft's (at least in software)

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Well, there is an existence proof by the lack of PWA adoption on Android and that companies aren’t forgoing the expense of creating native Android apps, that PWAs aren’t a “reasonable alternative” today on either platform.

Every single person I know with an Android phone has a webapp bookmark on their homescreen.

Your experiences are not everyone else's.

So you are going to compare “every person you know” to the fact that hardly any company or app developer is exclusively creating an iOS app and telling Android users just use the web since PWA support is so good?

You really don't get how the human emotion plays into this, huh?

Happy to break it down.

iOS user installs your service's app. Android user wants to then install one-click Google Play Store, feels like a second-class citizen if they're instead directed to find a URL to log in, forced to create their own bookmark....

By focusing marketing on the App Store, and "Apps", which led to those goofy badges (App Store, Play Store, now Samsung/Amazon App Store sometimes), Apple made native apps "the thing". If you don't have those badges on your site or in your ad, you're not signaling you're "real".

But it's just a social trend, at the end of the day.

We can make the app's functionality the same, or better, wherever we want. Even in Safari gulp.

So you’re saying that the PWA experience isn’t as good as a native app and conversion isn’t as high even on Android….

Neither platform has really given the concept a fair shake, though the Android and Google side are much fairer.

I'm saying there's adoption of these features regardless. Because it's still better than not having those three status pages as homescreen bookmarks.

Link, bookmark, and to home screen not needed. Pwas can be installed from the store... Native has zero arguments except if ya really need something the web can't do or if you're a bad dev.

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