I love Derek. He knows this. Nests failed to land and that's okay. Cornychat.com exists. It was fully coded sans AI by @Vic and has been around for like 3 years now. Hivetalk.org is also around still. @BITKARROT and her team put their hearts and souls into it. It has been around for 2+ years. There are options.

but those websites don't have apps either. The future is apps not websites.

You're right but that doesn't mean the things don't exist at all.

Apps require dev accounts with Apple and soon Google that violate privacy principles. Use browser based apps that can leverage your nostr identity via extension and don't require separate installs.

Its about the app being too slow to use on browser mode. If it's too slow then people won't use it no matter how nice your app looks and most browser websites are just too slow compared to apps. Yes, Google is adding restrictions but the majority of people don't care about that, only a tiny amount of people care about that, so you will end up with a dead app because lack of users. There is some PWAs, which sometimes you can get the user to install it, but it still not as fast a native. If you have a dev you could make it so the users won't notice the speed difference but apps still win.

Performance has little to do with browser vs native app.

Android has already rolled back this decision. It will remain technically open just with an annoying caveat for boomer protection. Not perfect, but better than nothing.