As soon as there’s a convincing use case that might provide an advantage for the mainstream end-user to upgrade to another phone, this scenario might take action.
Meaning that currently, as mentioned, web apps ain’t do enough ‘better’ than native solutions. At least not for the mainstream. I personally prfer using Facebook or Behance via webview on iOS as the apps drain battery or don’t give me the functionality I need. But most ppl might not care as much and prefer the optimized presentation. But at some point, web-technology might come up with a solution in combination with the device’s hardware to really deliver some obvious benefit and I hope the industry waits for that cake to be baked instead of trying out stuff too soon on the mass market as this could really harm that development.
I believe of all devices, the iPad Pro shows up the biggest draws of Apps. Marketed as a sort-of-replacement of your laptop, this device is barely usable to do actual work. I know it, because I got it and actually love it for illustrating stuff. But everytime I need to seaarch for the most basic things like where to find the option to save/export my work, i can’t stop shaking my head. Still we shouldn’t ignore the idea of this kind of devices to evolve as well and that they still might profit some how from app-infrastructure, if done better than now. I believe, a mix of both could work of some reasons: I don’t see editing 4K movies, drawing within some file over 100 layers or other stuff that might demand ressources to really benefit from the lack of apps. For some use cases it might still be nice to have some native package that’s downloaded once and maybe extended later on via additional content packages. Plus your solutions here are far more depending on online connections than current app-solutions are. Apps like Instapaper are made for scenarios without connection or bad/unreliable connection like on a train. With Apple’s ODR-idea, this might still be doable, but for the mainstream who would have to understand that they need to have a good connection 24/7 to use their devices like they used to, this might not work out good enough.
BUT for apps like Instagram, Twitter, Youtube — you name it — that traditionally aren’t worth too much without a connection, this might be a perfect thing to do. And there are actually other reasons like Youtube on iOS which really doesn’t feel like an iOS app while it might fit better in a general stream of web-apps.
So I wouldn’t say the future can live without apps at all. I’d say take a look on the desktop: Noone installs a facebook.exe/.app there as they are just running it on the browser while on mobile devices, apps for these services have just become excuses for their bad browser-solutions.
