The typical nontech user doesn't know what a PWA is, which is why native apps in the App Store are still very important.

I think most of the OpenAI's target audience must be technical enough to know they can access websites on a smartphone and bookmark them in some way.

They probably just want to fight abuse/spam/fraud/scams that are on the App Store/Play store so that it would stop devaluing their brand. "ChatGPT charged my card $299 without permission, I am going to the press!" is a disaster waiting to happen with these scammy apps.

The ChatGPT webapp audience is almost entirely nontechnical, which is the primary reason it went viral and so many people got fooled by fakes.

It is different from developers who are using the ChatGPT API to build apps.

Really? So many people tell me how great ChatGPT is at helping development and developers are pretty much by definition technical people.

Also, the signup process is far from easy. People here often cry about how "difficult" it is to sign up for Mastodon or Matrix etc and that is why the mainstream don't use it. Yet this is the same :)

ChatGPT is great for nontechnical people and technical people!

Not at all - loads of people use ChatGPT. Far, far more than would know about PWAs.

I mostly agree, but the average person doesn't know that's even an option. They hear "You should use ChatGPT!" and they go straight to the app store to try it out.

That's probably a good thing. When non-technical users go looking for free apps outside of any official app store, the chances of installing malware go way up.

source: I used to do tech support for my family

Many non-technical users look for apps in the App Store.

That said, it's possible to package progressive web apps (PWAs) for listing in app stores: PWABuilder[0].

Disclaimer: I've worked on PWABuilder.

[0]: https://www.pwabuilder.com

The in-app purchase to upgrade to plus is very smooth…

Is the cancellation process just as smooth?

YES. It's extremely clear and easy, in multiple ways, both through the ChatGPT app and through the Subscriptions Tab in settings in iOS. This is one of those things that Apple does reasonable well, compared to some vendors.

On Android, an app can replace the voice assistant, which a PWA cannot do. I agree that there doesn't seem to be any user benefit of a ChatGPT app on iOS.

How does that work with voice input? I assume dictation?

I'm not answering your question, but I just tried voice input on the ChatGPT iOS app. They integrate their whisper model to directly do speech recognition, and it is always broken for me, with "There was an unexpected error (API.API.APIError, 0)" on any input. Of course, I can also just type the mic and use the normal iOS text-to-speech in the input box, and that works fine.

they would be better off sticking with Apple’s voice to text because it’s actually pretty good.

ChatGPT is not a PWA, so it does not work very well if you do that. However I agree that if it were a PWA, it could work very well.

Does the PWA also log you out every few days like the regular website? That really annoys me so much. Every few days I type a question in the GPT tab I always have open, it realises I was kicked out and shows me the login screen. After logging in my question is gone and I have to type it again. Grrr..

I’ve been using yakgpt as my go to chatgpt interface.. Does not have the problem you mention.

Honestly it would be great if PWAs worked better. It feels like it has been a half implemented solution. Not all features of Safari work inside a PWA, and it's unclear if you can now get push notifications. Having some access to device level features like you get with native through custom JS APIs would also be a huge win.

My understanding is that this might have been what Apple originally planned to do. However, the popularity of the App Store, IAP revenue, and the focus on services disincentivized them from pushing this route further.