Apps are great for recurring use, it’s a PITA when it’s single/twice use or if you want standard features (accessibility, print/save screen, sharing urls etc.).
For instance parking payment apps, mobile ticket apps etc. that you download when in vacation and could 100% be web only, or a PWA if Apple was onboard with it, instead of their “light app” thing.
Or I had some of the government services apps not exposing text labels as selectable, which is a pain if you need to search for it. Same thing when you want to print/save the screen, you end up with a single screen png instead of potentially a fully scrolled and text including pdf. All these features could be coded in the app, but realistically devs don’t give a damn as it doesn’t bring much praise or money.
> For instance parking payment apps, mobile ticket apps etc
Should just be a payment terminal instead of an app. Beyond that, there's App Clips for one time use, and accessibility is worse on the web than on the iPhone (can't speak for Android). For printing and sharing, might be right, but it's broken on websites often enough, too. There are lots of developers (or their management) not caring about UX at all on both sides..
You need an interface on your phone for remote payment. Most of them have a workable mobile web site, but notifications for instance aren’t available in that case. Yes App Clips cover that case, but it doesn’t look to me that it got much traction.
> accessibility is worse on the web than on the iPhone (can't speak for Android). For printing and sharing, might be right, but it's broken on websites often enough, too.
I see this as the main point for having other browser engines. Mobile Safari is horrible to select text and on many basic features. I took these limitations for granted until I moved to android and the browsers work so much better (not flawless, but pretty close). Basically in this day and age, there’s no reason why a mobile browser should be weaker than its desktop counterpart.
In the current situation a ton of websites are already bailing out and shoving mobile apps to their users instead of actually addressing Safari.