Web App Time

As we wade further into an era of questioning the scale of and regulating tech companies, the question of the AppStore having a lock on app distribution has again become a topic of interest, mentioned recently by no less than Elizabeth Warren. Apple has many justifications for why native apps are limited to AppStore distribution. The chief one seems to be security. Allowing third party native apps from other app stores certainly would raise the risk for iPhone users. But the current policy gives Apple the onerous job of regulating tricky ethical issues, such as the Hong Kong iOS app recently pulled by Apple.

So one defense raised on Mac Break Weekly this week is the idea that Progressive Web Apps can offer an alternative for providing software that competes with native AppStore apps. My question is, can web apps really compete with native apps? Are they ready? I have seen some very impressive web apps recently, like Ableton’s web apps for learning about digital music.

From what I understand, Abletons apps use WebASM to achieve low latency audio. I am skeptical, but of course I am biased. I write native apps. I will probably never write web apps. It’s just not my thing. But I am curious. Are there other good examples of high performance web apps? Can a web app ever get the kind of access to hardware sensors that native apps have? What is the model for funding web apps? I don’t know! But I do love to play with these things.

Edit: This may also be related, Apple has changed the rules for native apps. You are not allowed to use web views for ”core features and functionality”.