Comment by jfkebwjsbx
5 years ago
Why would you ever want a PWA when a native version exists?
And "heavy client" is a fallacy. Operating systems come with runtimes too. Very complex native app can be very small in size if it uses the native controls and APIs. They can be KB in size. Any asset is going to be bigger than the binary itself.
The web-as-native apps are the ones that are huge, because they embed a behemoth (a browser) which is akin to an entire operating system.
PWAs run from the browser sandbox which is generally much stricter than restrictions for native apps. Permission systems for native applications seems to be starting to follow browsers (flatpak, snap, .appx, etc.), but don't offer nearly the ability to restrict what a native app can do like the browser does.
In theory native apps are "trusted", but I think for the vast majority of users the trust between a companies website and app are equivalent, vetted the same, and probably do an equivalent amount of tracking if not more by the native app (facebook SDKs are pretty common in native mobile apps).
I talked about paid or open source productive software, usually desktop based, nor ad-riddled mobile apps with the Facebook SDK which by definition are not trusted.
Mobile apps are increasingly sandboxed too, like websites, precisely because of that.
I already have a browser, and the PWA uses that.