Don't complain about Google taking over the Web, when everyone keeps packaging Chrome with their applications and calling it a native app.
Did that app work on all operating systems that were in use at that time? With a simple install? On DOS, Amiga, Apple, Acorn, Unix? The same app, with the same functionality?
If not: Would you rather live in a world dominated by native Windows applications, written in C with Win32?
Naturally before that there where no phones with Email to worry about.
There were games available across all those platforms, which are a specific kind of apps.
Wordperfect is good example of something available all over the place during the 1980-90's.
Thankfully C isn't the only way to use Win32, as it was already not the case with Win16.
I sometimes think we forget that Electron would have allowed them to ship this to customers super quickly, across all desktop platforms, and get a nice-looking application in to the hands of their customers (who probably have been requesting this for years).