You mean like web apps partially or completing ignoring platform-specific appearances, conventions, or behaviors?
Let’s not pretend that native apps are the only ones that struggle to work correctly cross-platform. While core logic may be portable in web app, frequently web UIs are happy to make a one-size-fits-all interface. While that may be acceptable in a web page, it is neglectful and insulting in a web app that wants to be treated as a peer of native apps.
So while I was never opposed to your sentiment, I find this to be a strange statement:
> While that may be acceptable in a web page, it is neglectful and insulting in a web app that wants to be treated as a peer of native apps.
This frames native apps as a gold standard, which obviously is a bar that web apps can never reach. There are foundational tradeoffs here that can never be worked around. You might as well demand that all native platforms implement a common API to ease cross platform development.
The reality is that supporting multiple platforms with their native conventions and idioms is a very large undertaking that fewer and fewer developers are willing to do. You can choose to label that neglectful and insulting, but I doubt it will overcome the incentives and market forces that are inexorably pushing in a different direction. I too lament the loss of a rich native app ecosystem. But on the other hand, I'm pretty thankful the web disrupted Microsoft just as their consolidation of desktop computing was nearly complete. You win some, you lose some, but if you want to shape the future, you must clear-eyed and forward-looking.
I don't think it's just about incentives and market forces. There is an inevitable trade-off between implementing the features that people want and working on ever deeper platform integration. This trade-off exists and will always exist irrespective of financial considerations.
Some people (not you) make it sound as if putting more work into platform integration is somehow a more noble goal than building other features, and if it wasn't for those greedy, cost cutting capitalists the natural steady state of all software would be some sort of "native" ideal.
I disagree with that. As a user I don't want developers to put time into every single thing that platform providers invent in order to make their own platform more unique, however useless or even detrimental that differentiation may be for me. Platform providers don't want to be replaceable pipes because that would hurt their margins.
In many cases one size really does fit all my needs when it comes to infrastructure. In a minority of cases I do need really deep platform integration. Both goals have their legitimate place in software engineering even before considering any profit motives and financial constraints.
In many ways the web is the last great open-protocol success, and the only one I can think of push its way all the way up the presentation layer. Kind of miraculous when you think about it.