I get that, if things are not changed on the Apple side, websites can’t have proper notification so you are forced to have an app but on android PWA (Progressive Web Apps - basically websites on steroids) are a real thing and you can just “install” the lemmy website of your instance and avoid any bloated app. Are you looking for an app with some feature missing from the website? Are you just unaware of the possibility of installing the website itself? I don’t want to sound rude (English isn’t my first language) but I don’t get what to me looks like an obsession to have a bloated app installed on your phone
I’m a backend developer so I may be wrong but if the problems are in the UI can’t a different frontend solve the issue? I’m unable to spot the difference between sarif and sens sarif fonts so I really don’t have any reason to install an app if the website offer a usable UI
The problem is that a webapp will not offer a ui native to a OS. Android, iOS, web, macOS, Windows, all have different ideas about everything that’s concerning the UI and UX, from the way to go back, to the position of buttons, to the durations of animations, to the bounciness of things on the screen. Either the web developer creates 5 different ui/ux version of the same app and preys that the browser supports everything he needs, or the webapp will feel native at best on 1 OS.
Applications also have access to APIs that a webapp can’t use, like widgets, shortcuts in various parts of the OS, deeper access to bt, contacts, cameras and a slew of other things. Even a “simple” usecase as Reddit/Lemmy could use deeper APIs than what a webapp can do.
That said, I’m at about 60 delivered apps, at least 20 of them should have been websites.