I think one of the large problems with the web app space is display. There is no way for a good web app to be put front and center and displayed to users; all the web app marketplaces (I say all, but Chrome Web Store seems to be the only one that actually matters) are cluttered, confusing, filled with links to websites masquerading as apps, and generally useless; and the installation process is cumbersome, unnatural, obtuse, and requires understanding of a device and abstraction of concepts about a device on a level most users simply don't grok. Yes, most web apps that directly compete with native apps are worse, but there are times when I, as a computer-literate developer, wish I could effectively use a web app, but simply have no way to integrate it with the way I work in a way that actually saves me time.<p>The web app evengelists (of which I am certainly one) often miss the importance of the little affordances that web apps don't have. This is both on the user and developer side, though the problem is primarily on the user's side, as developers can work around things. It is <i>tremendously</i> important that I be able to get instantly into my app by typing in my normal application launcher. I want to use the app without having to think about the technologies undergirding it first. It is <i>tremendously</i> important that I be able to silo a web app to its own window and be able to alt-tab between it and my browser. It is <i>tremendously</i> important that my basic shortcuts work in the app without doing strange things and occasionally killing it all together.<p>The problem is, this can't be achieved without large amounts of work from either the user (standard web apps with an arcane mix of desktop shortcuts or their equivalent and bizarre browser configuration), the developer (node-webkit apps like Atom or Light Table), or both (Chrome packaged apps, which manage to combine the worst of pretty much every world).<p>Ironically, the system on which web apps work best as part of the system, bar none (except ChromeOS because duh), is iOS, and even it has fundamental issues (no background persistence, easy to follow a link and be unable to go back to where you came from, various UI standards not working by default with the web) that make web apps, even the best of them, stand out like a sore thumb.<p>There's been a lot of work recently to fix this, but we're simply not to the point that web apps are anywhere in the same universe as indistinguishable from native apps. Personally, I have an optimistic view of the future in regards to the issue, but I also see Gruber's point: we web evengelists are being unrealistic when we blame the current failure of the web as an application delivery system for general-purpose applications for both desktop and mobile on some Apple's nefarious "closed garden" or other such complaints. Reality is, the web isn't there yet, and until it is, the web we have is the one we have, and we shouldn't be bemoaning the death of open standards while the whole world is speaking HTTP, just because our specific darlings aren't up to par yet.<p>This was slightly longer than intended. My apologies.