Can Nostr fix app distribution? I asked myself this question about a year ago and went down the app store rabbit hole. This is what I wrote back then, before the first line of code in Zapstore. https://zapstore.dev/blog/nostr-app-distribution/

#progress

The mobile market has a clear preference for apps over webapps. I love webapps and they have a lot of positives but few devs stop and reflect on what the market is conveying. I noted a few weeks ago: PWAs are an effective way of distributing applications permissionlessly, especially on iOS, but there's a few drawbacks: - Hard to install: the fact that you have multiple steps that need explanation (go to the hamburger menu, tap on install, but on iOS use Share...). As insignificant as this sounds, it's a major UX hurdle for users and why I think PWAs are not more widespread. Apple and Google know this very well. - Harder to discover: though not needing an app store is an upside, it hurts discoverability, especially on app stores with a social layer like Zapstore - Reliance on domain names: Not a huge problem but definitely not as sovereign as private keys - Hard to verify releases: since you pull data and UI from a website, it's unclear when you have upgraded, impractical to sign and next to impossible to audit a particular release. Websites typically perform lots of deployments every day