If Apple wanted to make PWAs look like apps, users wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Except that's not what Apple wants at all.

I don’t think that’d be possible without a considerably different web engine than currently exists. Even on desktop with Chrome which is the best case scenario currently, web apps are visibly different from their native counterparts due to differences in things like click handling, latency, etc.

Most apps nowadays are already websites inside a thin wrapper, and that part is just so it can go on the App Store and have certain OS integrations, not for the UI. Like yeah React Native implements a button with UIButton, but Safari also implements a button with native code.

Good example is Discord. Complex app, only really difference for native is something about push-to-talk.

Not quite, at least on iOS. React Native is the dominant non-native framework there. I run into web shells on occasion but they’re unusual relative to desktop.

Oh, I meant React Native, not an actual full-page UIWebView rendering the entire app (though there is that too). Yeah RN is a totally different renderer, but if something works in RN then I expect the same to work in web. Discord did both.

RN isn’t quite a web shell, it’s more of a hybrid, though I have seen RN apps use webviews to inject web app bits here and there.

If apps were interchangeable with PWAs we'd just call PWAs apps. What would be the difference, besides distribution?

That would be good too, "progressive web app" is a silly name

I don't think the average non-technical person would know one from the other aside from the installation process. This situation didn't come about because users demanded native apps, but because companies profit more from them.