Historically I have seen how much effort has gone into the trivial web view discourse hub.
On the surface it is “easy” but then you need to worry about 1000 little details.
- Shrink panel at the bottom
- The curve on the iPhone
- Loading spinners
- Webview constant updates
- Apple security checks and app approval process
- Complex debugging … what if something happens on the web view and not the site
This is not even an exhaustive list, I am sure @pmusaraj and @kris.kotlarek can pull out another 20 items.
Apps are very hard to get right and very expensive. These days only strong justification to build one is for iOS and it is not an easy journey.