To me, the odd take is thinking that the point of an app is to look good.

It is not, it's just an attribute, arguably important to the success of the app.

Yes. Yes, among other things the point of the app is to look good: be fluid, performant, responsive and conform to the platform look and feel and HIGs.

All the things that web apps objectively fail to do.

And if I can't find the app because of the awful app store interface, and if it's stealing my information by demanding permissions that it doesn't need, and if it's showing me ads that I can't block, and if it's bothering me with constant updates, why should I care if it's "fluid"? The goal of software is not to look pretty, it's to be functional. Web apps are more functional than native apps by my metrics. I do not care if it's less fluid, because I use software to do things.

> The goal of software is not to look pretty, it's to be functional.

Funny how web apps invariably fail in that regard, too.

> Web apps are more functional than native apps by my metrics.

So far you haven't described any metrics

> because I use software to do things.

So do I. And web apps always get in the way of me doing things: they lag, they perform poorly, they break al platform conventions, they hog resources,they can barely display static information without breaking etc.