This is probably going to cause a bit of a stir, but I read that article and saw the same arguments I used to see about "rich Flash applications" and how much better they were because they offered a more "delightful" user experience.
Some users need to be delighted. Other users just need to get stuff done. I appreciate the author's conclusion more than his article. His conclusion focused on using the right tool for the job. The rest of the article focused on native being the right tool for the job.
Native apps aren't more delightful than web apps. They're not better either. The developers make the difference from what I've seen. PivotalTracker's official app is painfully slow to update compared to the web application, which I've used on my iPad for a year. The web app doesn't handle touch gestures well. Both of these are flawed implementations.
The Twitter app on the iPad is insanely well done. Its android counterpart, however, looks like it was developed by a green intern on the cheap. On an Android device, I find the mobile app to work better.
Don't believe that native is better than web or vice-versa just based on web or native. I've seen amazing people do amazing things with both.
