Author here. Wrote this from the vantage point of having shipped Android apps from 2010 to 2019-20. It's a platform-war retrospective along an axis I don't see articulated cleanly very often: update friction and channel control rather than runtime capability. Short version of the argument: The native-only residue (where mobile genuinely wins on capability) is thinner than the narrative claims. UPI in India because the device is the channel. Frame-budget and AR-heavy games. Sustained background GPS. RAW camera. Delivery/on-demand, with a tell (the apps are richer than the web versions because that's where the channel control is, not because the web cannot do it). Electron is the keystone, not a defensive aside. Slack, VS Code, Postman, Bruno, Spotify desktop. If web-versus-native were the deciding axis, the entire web-shell desktop category should have failed. It did not, because the desktop channel is open and the maintainer ships on their own cadence. PWAs are the reverse proof. Apple controls three brakes on the iOS web channel: the WebKit-only rule, the buried Add to Home Screen, and the notification permission. iOS web push did not land until 16.4 in March 2023, years after Android. When the channel is suppressed, the maintainer's update advantage does not save you. The Android hobbyist economy died not from a market outcome but from a channel outcome. Cambridge Analytica 2018 was the public license for a multi-year platform-hardening cycle (target-SDK floor, scoped storage, Play Integrity, foreground-service mandates) that progressively re-priced what kind of software was even shippable. The store does not just control the install button; the channel itself keeps narrowing on the people inside it. It's Part 1 of a two-part series on delivery channels. Posting because I'd rather have the argument tested here than not. submitted by /u/lordVader1138 [link] [comments]