It is just as easy with native apps distributed via app stores, which is why most companies aren't that bothered with gatekeeping, as folks in sites like HN.
Emulators for Web apps doesn't make sense, that is a browser.
It naturally depends on the app (e.g. an app that simply calls out to an API naturally has the same issues whether it is native or not), but native apps tend to work offline, and you have the binary in a somewhat self-contained form, so you can (with the level of effort varying on platform, and the state of the available emulators) run the app with your data on a different machine/system.
For local-first web apps, which would be the easiest web apps to do this with, you have to fight the browser to do this, and I'm not sure how you would be able to dump out the state and code of a web app on Android Chrome and load it in Desktop Firefox. That and being able to update/modify the app locally permanently (and maybe even control updates) would I think make the equivalent of a web app emulator.
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It is just as easy with native apps distributed via app stores, which is why most companies aren't that bothered with gatekeeping, as folks in sites like HN.
Emulators for Web apps doesn't make sense, that is a browser.
It naturally depends on the app (e.g. an app that simply calls out to an API naturally has the same issues whether it is native or not), but native apps tend to work offline, and you have the binary in a somewhat self-contained form, so you can (with the level of effort varying on platform, and the state of the available emulators) run the app with your data on a different machine/system.
For local-first web apps, which would be the easiest web apps to do this with, you have to fight the browser to do this, and I'm not sure how you would be able to dump out the state and code of a web app on Android Chrome and load it in Desktop Firefox. That and being able to update/modify the app locally permanently (and maybe even control updates) would I think make the equivalent of a web app emulator.
Emulating a client-server application usually entails emulating the server, and only minimally modifying the client.