That bullshit to be honest. Not the lack of features in Safari, that's very real, but you don't need most of it. There is nothing that Patreon needs to do that could not be done by a 15 year old browser, let alone the newest version of Safari on iOS.
I can understand that developers would like to use certain feature, or that they'd make the job easier, but they are not required. Patreon isn't cutting edge web development, you could make it work on an IE8 if you cared enough. There it absolutely no features currently lacking in Safari that would prevent Patreon in moving to website only.
* An easy way to "install" the app. People want an icon on their home screen.
* To work offline and have a decent amount of storage for images and such.
* To start in a reasonable amount of time, even if the network is flaky.
And a bunch more of requirements. But just these three are hard to accomplish as a PWA. It should be possible, sure, but you'll be investing a lot of development time in what eventually amounts to an inferior experience when compared with a native app.
Exactly, it doesn't need native access to every bit of hardware to fulfill the needs of a simple app. If needed, Mobile Safari can do push notifications.[0]
I can understand that developers would like to use certain feature, or that they'd make the job easier, but they are not required. Patreon isn't cutting edge web development, you could make it work on an IE8 if you cared enough. There it absolutely no features currently lacking in Safari that would prevent Patreon in moving to website only.