I'm consistently amazed by HN's ability to take the most meaningless, inconsequential part of an article (the scroll behavior, the whitespace, the usage of the word "bricked"), and nitpick it to hell and back instead of actually discussing the article.

Bravo.

Vendor lock-in and ridiculous pricing sounds like just about every SaaS startup in the world. But it's Apple, so it's not okay.

Apple apps can only be developed on Apple computers and if you pay a fee to Apple for the privilege. And they own the app store. There's lock in and then there's complete vertical integration.

So don’t participate in that market. You have that choice.

As a user, sure. As a developer I don't really have a choice.

My monthly subscription is for a mobile plan, not a phone. I paid for that up front. Why would it be like SAAS?

I think OP means on the developers' end. The only monthly fee my iPhone seemingly requires is $.99/mo because their cloud storage tiers kind of suck.

And if you don’t want to participate in the market that has the most money to spend, I am sure other companies would love to.

I no more want a web app on my phone than I want an Electron app on my computer.

Web apps are nicer than Electron, since they don’t bundle Chromium.