I would want to see an iOS app that renders 1000 items in a list, with each item pushing to the navigation stack when clicked. And then I would want to see the same thing implemented in the browser with similar responsiveness on iOS Safari.
Writing this out made me realize another limitation of the browser: the page unloads when navigating, so going “back” can be a pain / impossible depending on the circumstances.
Actually, the biggest issue here is writing a native iOS app, due to the limitations enforced by Apple. Browsers on iOS are also a big pain, because all iOS browsers use the Safari rendering engine and the users don't even have the choice to use anything else.
However, you wrote that 'the page unloads when navigating' which made me wonder, how much you know about frontend development, because the pattern to prevent browsers from navigating is such a common topic and there are multiple solution patterns, all well understood by professional frontend developers:
- preventDefault
- return false
- use anchors
The 1000 item list is indeed a problem frontend developers have to be aware of. Modern flagship smartphones may have the capability to render such lists, but less powerful devices can't handle the load in a 60fps fashion. So you have to build list views that render only the visible part of the list. In the end, you have to do that anyway, because even for high-end devices there are limits to what they can show, but many web-components are not build with such scenarios in mind. And that is certainly one of the reasons why there are so many web apps with slow performance rendering.
Writing this out made me realize another limitation of the browser: the page unloads when navigating, so going “back” can be a pain / impossible depending on the circumstances.