With Stores those points are solved. Prominent ones like Valve, Apple, Google, Microsoft etc offer automatic updates, URL discovery, one-click install and stuff like that. They even have extra benefits, like reviews from actual users vs marketing landing pages of web software.
Browsers have "won" for other reasons: licensing control, unavoidable analytics, subscription mechanics... All that combined is a dream for a publisher.
> With Stores those points are solved. Prominent ones like Valve, Apple, Google, Microsoft etc...
didn't exist 20 years ago...
> Browsers have "won" for other reasons: licensing control, unavoidable analytics, subscription mechanics...
And those stores (and the native app platforms they reinforce) is what allows all these things in native apps, and makes them quite a bit harder to block than in web apps.
>> didn't exist 20 years ago...
> So what? I haven't said anything about that.
If the old native apps were the gold standard, modern distribution wasn't part of that. If we include modern distribution, then all the supposed advantages you cite for browsers "winning" apply just as well to native apps. And yet.
> Stores don't change what a native application can or cannot do.
and yet all those stores provide licensing control (and DRM), analytics, and subscription mechanics, often unavoidably (Apple) or unavoidably in practice (Google and until very recently, Steam).
Browsers have "won" for other reasons: licensing control, unavoidable analytics, subscription mechanics... All that combined is a dream for a publisher.