It seems to me that one of the main benefits of desktop apps is that they are tightly coupled to the platform. Great cross-platform apps are very much the excep

It seems to me that one of the main benefits of desktop apps is that they are tightly coupled to the platform. Great cross-platform apps are very much the exception. So my vote goes to web for cross-platform while heavily optimizing everything else (everything client-side, at least) for the one platform it natively runs on. I don't see great user experience coming through a different route. If you do need native capabilities client-side, hybrid apps that embed a UI built using web technologies are a potential option sometimes, too.