While I applaud Choice and his guys for taking the initiative to fill a major gap in the game experience by developing an app that accounts your grinding hour in game, I pause to ask why they had to?

PA should provide this in game, you have all the information already there...there is no reason not to...

While forcing players to use third party apps to see information they're looking for is the easy road for developers in this industry, why don't you do better than them PA?

They(PA) dont want players to know. The more they(PA) can obfuscate information from the players the more they(PA) can manipulate players.

It's a basic marketing tactic.

I'm guessing it's to hide that even as players get more gear they don't get that much more silver per hour. Overall, PA's game design opacity is backfiring for them because people are reporting as bugs things that are intended or assuming things are intended when they are bugs, meaning problems are unresolved for longer than they might otherwise be.

Not sure how it hides anything from the players. The stuff is in your inventory.

3rd party apps/websites means PA doesn't have to spend any money/dev time on it. Other games do the same thing, they just make it a bit easier on those 3rd party devs, while PA won't.

This right here.  They are not transparent.