No, the web isn't greater for the class of apps that Apple is targeting with the App Store. Or at least, it's not so much of a better platform that devs in this

No, the web isn't greater for the class of apps that Apple is targeting with the App Store. Or at least, it's not so much of a better platform that devs in this specific category are going to decide to ship a webapp instead of charging for a native app. A lot of this comes down to monetization. There are more Android devices out there than iOS devices, and more apps on Android. So is Android a better platform? No, the distinction is that iOS users buy apps, and Android users don't. So if you're not trying to build an ad-supported, microtransaction-fueled experience, iOS is just a better platform to release on. Similarly, the web is a very powerful distribution network for online apps, but there aren't many good ways to make money except via advertising, Patreon, and SaaS. The apps being sold on the Mac App Store mostly don't fit into those categories. That means as a developer, if you want to build something that just works, that you just charge money for, that you don't need to host on some kind of remote server, or manage accounts for -- the web becomes a much less attractive platform. The question is, once you decide to look at native, do you first look at Windows or Mac? I think that depends on what kind of app you're trying to build and who your target market is. For desktop games, 9/10 times you target Windows (which is why Apple cares about cross-platform game engines). For an app like Robomongo, I dunno. Maybe the economics become more interesting -- I'd be curious to see the revenue breakdowns for an app like that. Interestingly enough, the lack of (well-designed) PWA features are one of the big reasons why the web is still not particularly attractive for certain classes of apps. (You can't store information offline in an accessible format, your webapp breaks whenever the browser cache is cleared, you can't make arbitrary cross-domain requests). I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't see strong evidence that Apple is trying to kill the web. But it's not necessarily a crazy idea in the abstract, because I don't see the web as a dominant player in that space, and I don't see any economic incentive for Apple to care about making the web into a dominant player.