While I sympathize with the author, and feel the same way, I think Apple/Google have some blame here. They make certain simple things only possible in the apps, because the APIs are not exposed via the web.
Notifications is a big obvious one. Not sure if they've changed it since I last looked into it, but having an app installed was the only way to send a notification to someone for a long time.
Notifications is a big obvious one. Not sure if they've changed it since I last looked into it, but having an app installed was the only way to send a notification to someone for a long time.