&gt; iOS fails the &quot;there is nothing of importance you can do on Android that you can&#x27;t do on iOS&quot; test, and Android fails the &quot;there is nothing of importance you can do on iOS that you can&#x27;t do on Android&quot; test. Yet here we are, with two successful platforms.<p>At which point you have to ask whether the missing things are actually that important.<p>&gt; I think the truth is a lot more nuanced, and in particular I think the emphasis on &quot;native code&quot; is a convenient red herring.<p>&quot;Native code&quot; in this context is as distinguished from aggressively sandboxed javascript received over the network in real-time. It&#x27;s not only about performance. It&#x27;s about the app still working where there is no wireless signal, or being able to read or write device-wide settings or files, or make a VPN work, etc.