Appreciate it!
I can't think of a way that native apps are more convenient? With automatic updates it's even less convenient to have the updates go through the app store.
I totally agree with you, I developed a PWA and 'native app' which is mostly an webview of the same content. I often use the PWA version but it seems most (if not all) of my users are using the app version even when the app stores approve updates in a notifiable slower rate.
My native app do used some native plugin, but those functions are not often used by the users. So I feel they just blindly ask for apps.
Maybe they think native app loads faster than PWA? People don't want to wait for a SPA first-time loading but they won't blame the download and install time of native apps.
Don’t you mean to say the opposite? Most proponents of PWA’s I see are devs claiming that writing native apps is too hard, but most users prefer native apps because of better integration and performance/efficiency.
I starting making exactly this back in 2018 but didn't get people interested back then so I dropped it and let the domain expire, see the original (seems broken though):
https://web.archive.org/web/20180901171627/http://web-app.st...
It was my first time using a skeleton in CSS and using a Google Form as the way to submit a new app (with the spreadsheet as the database). I believe it was also my first PWA but I'm not 100% sure about that. While I learned a lot, some times I regret not having followed through, will keep an eye on https://progressiveapp.store/ to see how it goes.