developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps
Or do you think they have other tricks up their sleeve? It seems they would rather invest more in carrying the user into the app store. I could see them trying to create some interesting experience that obfuscates safari in order to simplify the user's experience... but I don't know how that will pan out.
It is possible that Apple might start playing the game. We are hoping with the release of the Tech Preview browser, they might be looking increasing their release schedule, but nobody really knows.
If they don't get more updates soon, developers will eventually start excluding Safari from apps (this has already started happening on a small scale), which will drive people to buy Android over iPhone.
Again, all speculation, but that is all anyone has right now.
You may be confusing web based apps with something else.
A web based app - an app that pretty much has all it's code inside of a webkit view - are perfectly acceptable in the App Store. They are generally frowned upon, but they will be accepted.
Would Apple ever build a system to develop web based apps? I don't think so.
TVOS specifically lacks any kind of web view, at all. TVOS being the latest "OS" from Apple, missing webkit says a lot IMO. They didn't want anyone cutting corners and just dumping code into a web view.
Swift is only 2 years old now and the syntax is much easier compared to Obj-C. It's not exactly as easy as JS, but the from what I read, it's much more forgiving then Obj-C ever was.
And there are already a ton of players in this space. React Native; Phonegap; Appcelerator; to name a few. I just came across another one today called GameSalad.
I don't think this is somewhere Apple wants to play; nor should they. Getting an app into production might be quicker with a web wrapper; but it doesn't produce nearly the same quality product.
Jason Knight
The less code you use, the less there is to break
Given that they barely even bother making meaningful updates to Safari ever since Google absconded with all the talented developers when they forked off Blink?
YEAH, RIGHT...
Let's be frank, Safari on ALL platforms is aging like milk, many developers have taken to calling Safari "The new IE", and they actively do everything they can to make it harder to get a alternative browser onto an iOS setup.
Increasingly it seems Apple could give a flying purple fish about the web, much less web apps. Whatever they have up their sleeve it certainly doesn't seem to be web technology related anymore... as it seems more like they want to just coast on what they have IE6 style... since they know that for now developers will bend over backwards to support their overpriced trinkets.