I agree with this to a certain extent. However, my experience with appcelerator was that the paradigms behind doing this type of development were very different

I agree with this to a certain extent. However, my experience with appcelerator was that the paradigms behind doing this type of development were very different from writing js in the browser. Although this offers a familiar language, there may still be just as much of a learning curve to learning to write native ios apps. That potentially being the case: if you're not required to support any other platforms right now other than ios, then just focus on learning Obj-C/Swift.