Having skimmed the article, I find that the author is the victim of his own poorly chosen title. (Or his editor's choice of title.) This is no generic argument

Having skimmed the article, I find that the author is the victim of his own poorly chosen title. (Or his editor's choice of title.) This is no generic argument against apps. It's an argument against apps in the specific context of publishing, and mostly prose publishing at that. That is a rather stronger argument to make. The web browser was designed as a surfing tool for writing and that is still its strong suit. The best app for browsing text is the browser, though admittedly this point is often lost because the browser is routinely abused to deliver crappy ad-festooned design disasters. (The best alternatives to browsers, like Instapaper, are arguably just browsers with very strict style guidelines.)