We've yet to see a web app that meets or exceeds the experience offered by native desktop apps. Natively built apps are almost always "better" because they're

We've yet to see a web app that meets or exceeds the experience offered by native desktop apps. Natively built apps are almost always "better" because they're closer to the OS and implement the native UI conventions. At the same time, web apps are almost always cheaper, because you don't have to develop for each platform from scratch (or suffer a lowest common denominator experience by using a cross-platform non-web dev framework.) Mobile has the same dynamic. Mobile web apps can get away with being worse, as long as they are "good enough" and available on all platforms. The app store's ease-of-shipping bonus has delayed this, but the shift to mobile web apps is pretty much inevitable because of the cost of development and the ease of deployment.