> I can’t understand how we got to this place with “app culture"

Thie assertion is extremely funny to me. Historically we come from an "app culture". Back in the day, around 2000 or so, if you wanted some functionality, you ran an application. You ran software in your computer.

Then on the early 2000s people started migrating their software web" , inventing "SaaS" (software as a service" .

I remember my young self being strongly opposed to that, because I saw little sense in constraining what you could do with a scripting language, when you could easily get the "networking" capabilities adding tcp/ip to your software .

But the web and Javascript won, mostly due to control (there was advertising in software since the 90s, for example Opera or GetRight had ad banners) .

The feature and mobile phones came and people started to migrate to "apps" again. So we came full circle.

I don't think that's it. Apps took off because people felt comfortable yoloing stuff from the Apple app store, and for a short while before saturation, the app store reach was making small developers rich.

Nah. When the App Store started getting truly popular you couldn't even run an ad blocker on mobile Safari. That came many years later.

IMO the reason we got to this place is twofold:

- apps give companies a spot on your Home Screen and allow you to develop a habit of opening it. I suspect Apple are very aware of this, which is why they continue to make it very difficult to install a web app to your home screen.

- notifications. Which, again, draw a returning audience

Two more things:

- well-designed apps retain enough state to be useful offline or in places with spotty coverage; PWAs can kinda be made to work like this but IIRC iOS will happily evict them under disk pressure;

- notifications. I've read that Apple have implemented them for home screen installed web apps but for reasons unknown I have not seen this in action even once.

That and having an app gives you a ton of options for data collection

I think it’s that your install base represents real customers who could actually buy things.

Web traffic is so diluted and low signal.

Apple has actually started allowing this. You can find the functionality in an adblocker called Wipr now and it works really well.

For most app ads it's enough to set a DoT or DoH in the system that blocks ad domains. Android supports this with a settings menu entry, on Apple one needs a more "technical" solution I think (loading some XML?). Most VPN apps also support DNS enforcement.

Apps like YouTube are an exception, but there are other ways around that on Android.

There are surprising portion of population expect a dedicated app to perform a particular function

It's too bad not enough people know about using adguard dns on their phones. Dunno about iPhones but it works wonders on Android. Only downside is it sometimes interferes with signing into public wifi networks.

There's also more data you can access from an app than from a browser. E.g. surrounding WiFi networks, battery level, persistent device identifier.