Comment by alex_young

Remember that when the iPhone was launched there was no app store. All you could do was 'install' a web app.

Now we have progressive web apps with full offline functionality, but installing them is a nightmare.

You have to dig through the share menu from Safari (tough luck if you use another browser) to install one, and Apple removes it after some time limit.

Maybe a half measure would be to make that process less restrictive and allow companies to directly distribute software to their users again...