It seems so inferior to have the same thing but lose access to the browser's suite of tools/capabilities. What could possibly change other people's opinion or what should I use to reconsider my perspective?
I’m talking from a position of “I have an app that I want to distribute to a population of end users.” If that population happens to be technical your solution would likely work fine. As well if you’re not distributing apps to end users you can do what’s right for you. But if you are you have to meet your users where they’re at.
As well operating outside of the browser has the advantage of OS integration (tray access, alt tab support, etc).
Clearly not true.
Sonarr and Radarr for example installs like a normal app. Then sits in the system tray. If click the system tray, most options inside launch a web browser that brings you to the localhost webapp. https://sonarr.tv/
People seem to assume this would be a hard to handle thing, but you can easily applicationize your local web services. And your local web service daemon can expose things like a system tray, to afford some classic manageability.