There's swathes of apps that will never be allowed on popular app stores (gambling, porn, sometimes apps that Google or Apple doesn't want competing with their own services). You can created a native app but it'll only be usable on Android.
Native applications also require acquisition of a Mac and a $99/year membership (iOS) and $25 (one-time fee for Google Play). A web application is mostly hosting costs which can be near free if you use the right cloud services.
I don't know of an alternative that will let me develop a small tool that will be free to develop and distribute, is not subject to restrictive store policies, works on desktop and mobile and is capable of things like accessing the device's camera and location when necessary.
I'm personally a fan of PWAs because they can't secretly write identifiers to my phone's SD card, they can't extract my contracts, they can't monitor my location in the background, etc. Sure, modern smartphone operating systems allow you to set up proper restrictions, but that puts the responsibility of making applications behave on me instead of on the phone.
Sure, native applications have their place (geofencing, native performance, file system access, system APIs) but in my opinion so do PWAs.
Native applications also require acquisition of a Mac and a $99/year membership (iOS) and $25 (one-time fee for Google Play). A web application is mostly hosting costs which can be near free if you use the right cloud services.
I don't know of an alternative that will let me develop a small tool that will be free to develop and distribute, is not subject to restrictive store policies, works on desktop and mobile and is capable of things like accessing the device's camera and location when necessary.
I'm personally a fan of PWAs because they can't secretly write identifiers to my phone's SD card, they can't extract my contracts, they can't monitor my location in the background, etc. Sure, modern smartphone operating systems allow you to set up proper restrictions, but that puts the responsibility of making applications behave on me instead of on the phone.
Sure, native applications have their place (geofencing, native performance, file system access, system APIs) but in my opinion so do PWAs.