Its not about whats a better experience for the user its about what gives apple more money and control. Apple gets to pick which apps make it on to the app store and they take a huge cut of all sales on apps.
I really get annoyed when I see people talking about the "huge cut of all sales on apps" in isolation, as though hosting high-traffic downloads, handling financial transactions (purchases, in-app purchases, subscriptions, credit card handling, fraud investigation, etc.), and occasional spots of marketing and publicity when an app does particularly well or is featured in the Stories cost nothing.
It's not like these things are cheap, and plenty of developers wouldn't have a shot of successfully delivering an app without the infrastructure in place to support them.
It should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that the vendor wants their cut.
If we are having an honest conversation about who gets a cut of what, we have to realise that web apps still have bills to pay and people getting their cut of something — credit card handlers, payments systems, web hosting (and that ain't cheap, especially when demand rises) on top of the cost of hosting an API and databases, and plenty of other costs.
You know that in Android, if you as a developer use in app purchases, you have to pay a cut to the play store, right? But the thing is, you can also do payments on your own (although users are much less likely to trust you), in which case there is no cut. This is why I can buy a book in Kindle on my android phone, but no on my dad's ipod.
That's what people are asking for. If you want to provide services, sure, charge for them, but also allow developers to not use your services in this case.
Apples monopoly enforcement in both this and in html rendering is one of the biggest causes of stagnation in tech right now.
When I run a web app, sure, I need to pay lots of different middle men. But I get to choose which ones I use.
Its the same situation for steam. Steam provides real value for indie devs who can't set up payment systems and download servers but once you get to a large size you are just having all your money sucked out by valve who provide nothing that you couldn't do yourself cheaper.
