In most countries it's still possible, but Apple announced to remove this feature¹, then announced it's not removing it b/c the EU told them it's not going to accept that or so. I've lost count by now.
In any case, it's possible, but with very little effort, could be far easier than managing native apps even. But alas, that's a threat to a business model of Apple, so not going to happen unless forced, as
They said they'd remove web apps, not bookmarks. A bookmark on the home screen just opens in the browser instead of its own webview. They're simple to add and use.
Strictly speaking, you don't need to distribute anything more than ads to "thus make money" off a webapp. The end-goal of webapps is not to challenge Apple's revenue though, it's to offer meaningful (see: persistent) capabilities that write-once and ship-anywhere.
You're being a reductive troll. Stop making bad-faith arguments if that's the only way you intend to contribute to the discussion.
No, I'm saying that your prior comments are trolling. "There’s literally nothing stopping someone" and "You don’t need any of that" is both untrue and a bad-faith response to the parent's post. You might as well have not commented if your intention was to defend your personal opinion about webapps.
There’s no kicker to begin with - the vast majority of apps in the app story require internet anyway, and thus the web is more than a sufficient vehicle to distribute an app. Reddit, Facebook, instagram, Spotify, YouTube, Airbnb, the list goes on.
And no, I’m not trolling. Saying it does not make it so. It’s simply a fact that most apps on the App Store could be web apps. Go and look for yourself. In fact, most of the top apps already have web app versions which proves my point. Right now on my iPhone if you go to the App Store you see “essentials” which list zoom TikTok and Hulu as the top three - all three have web apps.
People have brainwashed themselves sadly into thinking you need an app.
You may notice, the web version of every app you just listed is strictly inferior to the native ones. It's simply a fact that PWA and Webapp features have been sidelined for the majority of the iPhone's lifespan. Even the good webapps can't achieve feature-parity with YouTube or Spotify installed natively.
> And no, I’m not trolling.
It's incredibly hard to tell. Who the fuck is listening to Spotify in mobile Safari?
There's literally apple stopping that.
By limiting APIs, by removing the ability to treat them as other apps (home screen icons), by blocking apps that are hybrids etc.