Heard about it, but that only applies when PWA's are running in the browser. When installed on the home screen it will not have an effect

Oh I missed that bit? That is good to hear.

apple is lagging behind on PWA support but PWA's are definitely coming either way. the reason why apple is lagging on support is because it will take a significant hit on their app store revenues as PWA's remove having to go throw third parties such as apple

The funny thing is that Steve Jobs vision was that all apps would be web apps. Apple don't want to sell apps, they want to sell devices. And for people to buy devices there need to be great app's. The reason why they didn't go with web apps is that you wouldn't be able to utilize 100% of the hardware capabilities. But it seems to get harder and harder to do low level stuff on Apple devices, so maybe they will eventually get to something that is close to web apps... But if PWA's works on other devices too, I don't think Apple would want that.

This always gets spread around HN as some kind of conspiracy theory. The webkit team has implemented many of the features required for PWAs and has many more on their roadmap. In fact there is probably enough there already for PWAs to compete with some classes of native apps.

Why would I use a PWA over a native so if I had the choice though?

Well if the PWA experience is good enough then some developers aren't going to list their apps in the app store at all so they can bypass Apple's revenue cut. PWAs also have less access in general and so are more secure/sandboxed.

Most of the revenue made from app stores come from pay to win games (which need native performance) or subscriptions that work across platforms. Many major players that use subscription prices have abandoned Apple’s subscription payments.

Second issue, what are the chances that I would trust some random website with my credit card information?

Except that those PWAs are not making money to get a cut from anyway. Or if they do it's via ads which makes them non-starters anyway.

^ exactly and when there are big benefits to developers like that and the technology is focused on more, the maturity of what it will become is what really excites me

PWA has it much harder to spy on you and undermine your privacy.

Why would I use a native app over a PWA if I had the choice?

Native apps generally have nicer UIs, better performance, and reduced resource-consumption, and may have more features.

All true except reduced resource consumption, I don't believe that's an universal truth. Some native apps drain a lot of battery because they do more than they should, like the Facebook app spying on you on every conceivable way (and probably also in some inconceivable ones).

Technically I covered that under "fewer features" ;-P

Surely it is the other way around?

Apple will reject your app from the store if you ask for permissions not necessary for it to function. It also gives the user fine grained control and awareness of what the app has access to, for how long, etc.

Some random JS app that can load in whatever it wants after the fact can make no such claim to as much security or privacy.

Whatever JS a page loads it cannot steal all my contacts, browse my filesystem or track my location without me giving permission, so I consider web apps much better than native apps privacy-wise.

It's true that Apple does a better job at protecting the privacy of its users. I'm an Android user and privacy is terrible. I self-limit myself to use the least amount of native apps, using webapps and open-source apps as much as possible. For example right now I'm using Hacker News through it's web interface on my phone.