I don't like the term web-apps for this reason. Some places refer to them as apps using web technologies to indicate that the things involved are HTML+JS rather than things that come via a Web Server.
I don't think that makes it a semantic argument. I think it's more of semantic confusion. Too many people wanting different things are assembling under the one banner without realising how different their goals are.
I can make an app that does 90% of what I want quite quickly in HTML+JS, but I don't use that because I know the critical remaining 10% is impossible.
No, he didn't. Native platforms simply don't have the commitment to openness and cross- and backwards-compatibility that the Web does. He described all the advantages of native apps, but the disadvantages, the advantages of the Web, are so uncompromisable they were implicit, so he didn't mention them.
There's a reason that compared to native platforms, the Web has way fewer problems with proprietary standards, walled gardens, dependency and upgrade hell.
> There's a reason that compared to native platforms, the Web has way fewer problems with proprietary standards, walled gardens, dependency and upgrade hell.
Compared to proprietary platforms like Windows or OS X, sure, but free platforms like Linux and *BSD avoid all of that except maybe upgrades, and that's only a minor inconvenience since package managers are pretty good. Plus, you have the advantage of not being beholden to the web app provider's upgrade schedule, where you can almost never revert to a previous version.
And while web apps (at least in their state today) are necessarily open in the front-end, they're usually very closed on the server-side, which is definitely a step backwards from Linux/BSD.
