It's been nearly a decade, and we're still talking about PWAs being the next big thing. Mozilla/Firefox has killed them off for good [0], and Safari support is tepid at best. It was ultimately just another push by Google a la AMP to corner the browser market some more, and the rest of the vendors are fed up with it. Devs by and large never bought into it because they are objectively inferior to native, while the tiny number of niche use cases where they do make sense have (rightfully) just avoided the complexity and remained as normal web apps.
As a developer, I am putting my eggs in the PWA basket[0]. I fully maintain my native versions, but actively work on achieving parity on the PWA front. The complexity is definitely not greater than developing native.
It feels a lot safer to develop a PWA than a native app. Developing native apps subjects you to the arbitrary fancies of Apple and Google. And even worse, your life depends on them. For all we know they might crash tomorrow and then what? Developing a PWA frees you from these worries. I am not a developer to make a quick buck, or to go public. I care about the things I make. I want them to live forever and be sustainable. Buying into the "web toolchain" is a lot safer than buying into the latest native fad pushed by a tech giant that owns the platform and only cares about profits. I have come to terms with this. One day, I will only have a PWA version. Don't know when. It's my conclusion of many years
It's been nearly a decade, and we're still talking about PWAs being the next big thing. Mozilla/Firefox has killed them off for good [0], and Safari support is tepid at best. It was ultimately just another push by Google a la AMP to corner the browser market some more, and the rest of the vendors are fed up with it. Devs by and large never bought into it because they are objectively inferior to native, while the tiny number of niche use cases where they do make sense have (rightfully) just avoided the complexity and remained as normal web apps.
[0] https://9to5google.com/2021/01/27/firefox-discontinues-work-...