EDIT: I do understand you can make web apps that work offline by jumping through enough hoops. But then again, why would you? Why try to unnecessarily shoehorn everything into the web paradigm?
Let's take an iPad drawing app that is super well integrated with Apple Pencil. What benefit would forcing it onto the web bring, considering the performance hit and usage of specialized hardware?
Or a recording app that I might use to take voice notes or record other audio. Why does that need to be a web application?
* platform agnostic
* can't be blocked by a central platform gate-keeper
* generally much smaller (download size) than native apps
* don't take up permanent space on your device (good for things you only use occasionally)
* always up-to-date
Personally I prefer native apps for tools I use frequently. Everything else I prefer the web.
* this is true-ish. It's not that they can't it's that they aren't. If Apple or Google just up and blocked a site in Safari or Chrome it's basically dead. "Technically accessible in Firefox" isn't exactly a selling point. You're also gate-kept by your ability to get a public cert.
* True but download size only really matters on first install. It's absolutely friction but not really something that I've ever seen people care about anymore. Pictures take up almost all of the storage on people's phones now.
* True but the trade-off there is that you have to download it every time. Native apps win in the long run if you use it often.
* Users have never cared about this. This is only a benefit to the very techy.
I'd rather see better cross-platform native tools than more web tools. The web is bloated, overloaded, and has a lot of historical baggage. That isn't to say it can't still be used well, but I still like seeing alternatives with innovation.