A naive desktop app is the deluxe option. It'll always be more efficient than even the best web-technology based app, because it can skip tens to hundreds of la

A naive desktop app is the deluxe option. It'll always be more efficient than even the best web-technology based app, because it can skip tens to hundreds of layers of abstractions (e.g. Javascript, HTML, CSS, DOM) if done right. So the questions are: - do your customers care about performance? (gaming, 3D animation, music editing) - are resource limits relevant? (embedded systems, mixing desks, broadcast, dvr) - are people concerned about battery life? (pagers, medical equipment) If none of these reasons for native apply, you can probably make your users suffer through a web app, which will be much cheaper for you to produce and maintain. That said, people definitely notice the sluggishness that all web apps have. I mean those 100ms from click to screen update. So your customers will most likely be able to intuitively feel if your app is native or not, with native feeling better. For some groups of customers, this premium feel might be a decision factor. For example, Apple TV (super responsive) versus Netflix (objectively slow website).