This is one of those nasty Prisoner's Dilemma type problems where everyone would probably benefit from a collective action in the long term, but it's hard to agree and coordinate when so many individuals derive (smaller and/or short-term) benefit from the status quo. Most societal problems seem to be of this form.

What's your alternative, since there isn't any, except to completely change your industry or business model?

iOS users are known to pay for apps they like. Android users less so.

The alternative could a webapp. But this all depends on what hardware access you need.

In the end it is a choice of business model. Taking the risk of making money while being dependant on one party (Apple, Youtube) is always a huge risk.

Users won't pay a one time fee to use a webapp and theres no infrastructure to do this. Maybe paid up front apps are a dying business model anyway and everything will be subscription based in the future. Theres also just a whole lot missing from PWAs right now, even on Android where they're at least somewhat supported.

Edit: Just to clarify I'm not bashing PWAs I've developed a lot for both the web and iOS and consider myself fairly mercenary, I will jump ship to other tech if need be. But there is still quite a way to go[0] and it's going to be hard to get these companies to agree on some of these standards. I'm also conscious of the fact that PWAs may just replace one dictator (Apple) with another (Google).

[0] https://whatwebcando.today/

the PWA experience is still not so great on iOS. no push notifications, limited service worker support, etc. the only realistic solution for many businesses is sadly a native app.

This is one of many reasons I am mad at Apple. Crippling PWA support makes perfect business sense for them, but ugh I hate them so much for it.

I don't even want to make any money off iOS apps in the short or medium term. I just want to make apps for my friends and family, and have the iPhone users have as good an experience as the Android users. But I'm not going to get into iOS development just for that. Why, why, why can't I just achieve it with a PWA?!

Because Apple will make less money that way, that's why. Again, it makes sense, but I still hate them for it.

Web app is not really an alternative on iOS, not unless Apple stops actively crippling PWAs and I don’t see Apple doing this unless they are forced to do so (anti trust).

PWAs are crippled by design.

Your ignorance is showing. There's few if any features PWAs can't compare in. And many of them are derived from Apple or Google fuckery.

No one will pay anything if there isn't a thing to buy.

> Bite down hard, because that whip's coming.

You're thinking of a whip, I'm thinking of another implement