For apps that don't need special access to hardware and that can therefore be written as web apps, whether a web app or native one would be better depends solel

For apps that don't need special access to hardware and that can therefore be written as web apps, whether a web app or native one would be better depends solely on execution. On my iPod Touch there are 4 big examples of things I prefer as web apps just because the available native ones aren't as good: Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook and Hacker News. (Well, Gmail doesn't count maybe: I mostly use the built-in mail app, but find the web app much much better for searching and about equally good for normal use.) I guess Google itself might make a better Google Reader native client than the web app, but currently all of the 3rd party native clients have some annoying minor problem: some don't have zoom for images, some don't have a "Like" function, some don't display TeX formulas in wordpress math blogs properly, one bizarrely turns the entire text of arXiv feeds into a link; none of the native apps works perfectly on my feeds. As for Facebook, the native app is not bad but it's noticeably slower than the web app and only let's you like status updates not comments on them. I mainly use the web app but do have the native app to upload photos on occasion (on my previous, camera-less iPod I only used the web app). Hacker News native apps probably suffer from a lack of API, so maybe it's not fair to mention them, but if one worked properly I'd probably use it. I used to use Michael Grinich's app (I hope I'm remembering his name correctly), but recently it won't let me comment. That together with it being much slower than either actual HN or iHackerNews, made me go web.