There's nothing preventing the implementation of sharing via a website (or posting to a URL) instead of an app. There's nothing preventing standard interactions with your phone to be delivered by checking an API instead of requiring an app. You can still use many websites in offline mode.
They are right, pushing for apps can a way to silo data and prevent you from using your phone as a general purpose device. How can you share from the app if they don't bring up the list of intents for you? Can you select which push notifications to receive for a given app or do you get all of them? Etc.
> prevent you from using your phone as a general purpose
> device
So some time ago you were able to use your phone as a general purpose device? Interesting, for me iPhone was the first phone that made web bearable on mobile.
But there's Apple's continued refusal to let us use the hardware in any way they don't like, and this push for apps instead of websites. It looks to me like one step forward, two steps back.
We finally have these tiny computers in our pockets. We should push hard to stop anything restricting it. For me that includes refusing to use an app that offers nothing over the website other than push notice advertising.
They are right, pushing for apps can a way to silo data and prevent you from using your phone as a general purpose device. How can you share from the app if they don't bring up the list of intents for you? Can you select which push notifications to receive for a given app or do you get all of them? Etc.