Most native apps are some half gig large where even the heaviest website is a few mb. They dont let you highlight text and have other bizarre design choices. Even worse, they request importing contacts list which isnt even an option on the web.
Native apps could be butter but more often than not they are like margarine. Smooth, oily, and not good for you.
Reddit always asks you to use its native app, for example. Why the fuck would I care so much about Reddit that I want it outside of my browser? Same goes for any other website.
But I'll eat my hat before I'll install Reddit's own app. Reddit killing off 3rd party apps is why I post here and not there.
Native apps make sense when you need to tap in to platform specific features like the Lidar api and such. They don’t make any sense for most websites.
WAAAAAY too often the 1st party native app is exactly what the other poster said: a browser context with access to some local native API's in order to hoover more data about the user. It is rare that a first-party app actually has some effort put into it to be a quality app. Is in fact so rare, that the sites that actually put in the effort suffer because folks can't believe that a native app for a site could actually be better or worth it.
McMaster-Carr begs to differ. Hell even old.reddit is pretty snappy (but deliberately shittily rendered on mobile). Websites can be fast if you don't stuff them with bullshit or degrade then on purpose to drive traffic to the app.
But if they had a native app (do they?) I imagine they would have the wherewithal to build the app natively, with the same stellar navigation of their website, and maybe some native-only features? Imagine if you could use the 3d sensor + camera of an iPhone, and point it at an assembly, and the app would identify the parts it could, and you could order with one click, or integrate with a local ERP or other systems...