Frankly, this is only possible by web apps not being web apps.
I'm not sure I agree with that, though it might never happen because the owners of the major platforms have absolutely no interest in being turned into a dumb foundation by the web (or a badly debugged set of device drivers, as Andreesen put it in 1995). The reasons for the ascendance of mobile are political and corporate though, not technical. There's little reason webkit performance cannot approach that of native, particularly if it used something like nacl rather than js, and no reason APIs cannot be exposed to web apps too (Apple exposes quite a few).
Web apps are currently superior in: deployment,future-proofing, IMO discoverability, platform independence, and most importantly cost
Native apps are currently superior in: performance, accessible APIs, 3D
Their relative strengths will change over time, but note that performance is not usually an insurmountable obstacle, while some of those areas where the web has strengths are inimical to the way Google, Apple, MS or Amazon want to do business - for corporations to tie in their customer as tightly as possible to their ecosystem and tightly control what is available to them (as Apple have for example banned kindle selling on their platform) is the best possible outcome. App stores are broken by design, just as the MS desktop monopoly was, and I don't think they will be able to surmount those problems, because they are fundamentally user-hostile. Why can't I buy kindle books on my ipad? Because Apple wants to make money from that transaction.
The web has other problems, among them a worse is better approach in many areas, but I think it's ultimately going to prevail over other solutions bound to a specific hardware/software stack.
> There's little reason webkit performance cannot approach that of native, particularly if it used something like nacl rather than js, and no reason APIs cannot be exposed to web apps too (Apple exposes quite a few).
While I agree with that sentiment, I disagree with the example provided ... if you talk about NaCL, you're not talking about web apps or "the web" anymore. It's not a standard, it has portability issues and it will probably never be implemented by anybody else other than Google. We can bitch and moan about how broken the W3C standardization process is, but the existence of this process is also why the web is open and why it's awesome.
The alternative asm.js, while not being an answer to all issues addressed by NaCL, is a much better approach, because it's still standard JS and even if the browser does not optimize for the asm.js instructions set, the app still works - and if it takes off for games (and I believe it will), then all browser vendors will be forced to optimize for it - because it's one thing to not support some plugin (e.g. NaCL) and quite another to have clear instances in which the browser is much slower than the competition and thus directly comparable.
For unbelievers that haven't seen asm.js in action, checkout this famous demo that works well in both Firefox and Chrome: http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/ - that's pure JS right there and I don't think the limits have been reached.
Almost every device connects to the internet now, not just web servers. I'm not sure the mobile or desktop story is any better - there are known and unknown exploits for all the main platforms, the DRM is broken frequently, and once the OS is exploited it's very hard for an app to stay secure individually.
So I'd say the web is at least equal to that in security, and perhaps better as you can quickly push out fixes and are in control of the entire infrastructure, whereas app developers are at the mercy of their platform creator to roll out fixes or allow them to roll out fixes, which can take days or weeks for approval.
Really have to disagree. You start on a false premise that almost every device is connected to the internet.
In banking, insurance, governmental, education and medical spheres, there are hard privacy and secrecy requirements. Same goes for military - look what happens when they slip up. If you want to think about it - what percentage of the economy do these interests represent? I would say a large portion. So to my mind a large portion of the economy has a data security requirement that don't seem to be met by web apps.
In the consumer sphere, sure you can replace some programs with javascript, but can you see apple employee's using google docs at work? Why is that?
Also in corporate networks, they may be connected but through a proxy - which would reduce the attack surface.
There are air gaps and network gaps for data security. So your conclusion is based on a false premise.
If you're relying on air-gaps or proxies for security, the same applies to web apps, so I don't think this advances your argument that native apps are more secure than web apps - Intranets can host web apps too.
Apologies for side-tracking you with this irrelevant argument about connection to the internet - I was thinking of mobile devices specifically, which are almost all exposed directly, but you're right, there is a whole class of apps/devices which are deliberately kept off the public internet.
I'm not sure I agree with that, though it might never happen because the owners of the major platforms have absolutely no interest in being turned into a dumb foundation by the web (or a badly debugged set of device drivers, as Andreesen put it in 1995). The reasons for the ascendance of mobile are political and corporate though, not technical. There's little reason webkit performance cannot approach that of native, particularly if it used something like nacl rather than js, and no reason APIs cannot be exposed to web apps too (Apple exposes quite a few).
Web apps are currently superior in: deployment,future-proofing, IMO discoverability, platform independence, and most importantly cost
Native apps are currently superior in: performance, accessible APIs, 3D
Their relative strengths will change over time, but note that performance is not usually an insurmountable obstacle, while some of those areas where the web has strengths are inimical to the way Google, Apple, MS or Amazon want to do business - for corporations to tie in their customer as tightly as possible to their ecosystem and tightly control what is available to them (as Apple have for example banned kindle selling on their platform) is the best possible outcome. App stores are broken by design, just as the MS desktop monopoly was, and I don't think they will be able to surmount those problems, because they are fundamentally user-hostile. Why can't I buy kindle books on my ipad? Because Apple wants to make money from that transaction.
The web has other problems, among them a worse is better approach in many areas, but I think it's ultimately going to prevail over other solutions bound to a specific hardware/software stack.