Download the Twitter and PWA apps. Compare the two.
If you think the only difference between them is push notifications and one click install then of course you will think PWA will be a success. But a lot of us can easily see the difference.
And based on the last 15 years of real world experience there are enough users like us to sink the hopes of PWA apps.
When you have a strong reason to not optimize one of two ways of building your mobile app, you are not going to optimize one of two ways of building your mobile app. Not having push notifications – for years on end, with no inkling if that might ever change, because the platform makers have strong reason to sabotage it – is a pretty strong reason, specially when your measure of success is literally how often users get distracted pulled into your app.
In 2023 there is absolutely nothing that would technically not allow us to build a buttery smooth 90fps experience in any mobile browser running on a recent-ish phone. Of course that is not to say it's particularly easy. But then again, so isn't building a performant native app.
The twitter PWA is actually a very good PWA. But it doesn't implement some gestures like swiping left to see more feeds on the home screen, and has little to no animation support (retweet dialog pops up, instead of animating in like it does in the native app). It also does not do paint holding, so you get a temporary white screen when swiping back to the previous screen. But all of those problems could be fixed, with current web tech, afaict.
Is there any other lackings (which might be fundamental and unfixable for a PWA) that you had in mind?
If you think the only difference between them is push notifications and one click install then of course you will think PWA will be a success. But a lot of us can easily see the difference.
And based on the last 15 years of real world experience there are enough users like us to sink the hopes of PWA apps.