The reality is that the quality of any app depends on the skill set of the developer(s). Some of the native apps I use are wonderful, others are terrible.
As a web developer who is currently on a mobile app project that uses HTML5 and PhoneGap, I have been pleasantly surprised that we have been able to create an app that, in my opinion, looks great, is wonderfully fast on newer devices, and is a pleasure to use.
HTML5 is not the right choice for a lot of apps. But it's an option that should be taken seriously by anyone who has web development experience and it's a solution that I feel is getting better every day.
The important bit is that HTML5 is a set of standard abstractions around complicated things, such as networking and data-storage, that should almost never be re-built from scratch by the developer.
It is extremely important that we build standards around these things. Unfortunately, it seems like these abstractions are only accessible through a JavaScript DOM environment, which makes them sort of useless if you need/want another language.
I think we need languages agnostic standards. That's at least my idea of the future of the web and desktop development.
As a web developer who is currently on a mobile app project that uses HTML5 and PhoneGap, I have been pleasantly surprised that we have been able to create an app that, in my opinion, looks great, is wonderfully fast on newer devices, and is a pleasure to use.
HTML5 is not the right choice for a lot of apps. But it's an option that should be taken seriously by anyone who has web development experience and it's a solution that I feel is getting better every day.