You can complain about this, you can talk about how unfair it is, you can extol the virtues of PWAs …

That's why there are efforts to get platform companies to allow putting PWAs into their app stores. I think on Android it's already possible with a thin wrapper and with regulatory pressure it might be necessary for other platforms to enable that as well.

"customer don't care what language/framework you are using" is a strange way to support a claim they do care about having a native app over a PWA. The first statement highlights that the user just wants something that works as advertised, and doesn't care about the framework. But the second statement highlights that, despite their disinterest in the technology, they care deeply about the app's delivery tech (PWAs vs native). I think this juxtaposition reveals a lot about why things are the way they are, and why users are forced to care about native apps over PWAs. Just like language is a vehicle for logic, the app delivery tech is just a vehicle for a UI. PWA tech sucks because platforms are incentivized to make it suck. People prefer native apps because they're being funnelled down that path by anti-competitive interests. You don't seem to make that connection. I get it, you were burned…

> Customers want apps. Companies want apps. No one except us nerds want PWAs. I used to work on a platform that offered native iOS apps, native Android apps, and PWA / web apps for all our customers. When users were given the choice, around two thirds opted for the native iOS app, about a quarter opted for the native Android app, and about 10% opted for the PWA / web app. That’s including desktop users, not just mobile. Users want native apps.

You talk a lot about what customers want, but they want apps only because Apple makes PWAs so unpleasant. There are some tech limitations (games might be tougher), but most of what makes PWAs suck is Apple. In another timeline, Apple chose to double-down on PWAs instead of the App Store after the iphone 1, and PWAs are the majority of non-performance-sensitive smartphone applications.

Tell that to users of https://sniffies.com nsfw Can’t have that on the app store.

Users also have their favourite messaging apps and services, completely oblivious to the fact that it’s actually completely stupid that there is basically no interoperability between these apps and services. Imagine if Yahoo mail could never send emails to Hotmail or Gmail. People in the know rightfully care about the erosion of standards for which big tech have built their empires upon.