Of course there are alternative methods like starting a wifi access point and having users connect to that but this makes it a lot more complicated for the end user. That results in un-happy customers and a lot of extra support costs.
I totally agree. My software is essentially a digital asset manager, though with a bit of extra functionality and project management built-in. I don't see how a web app could efficiently index millions of files on the local file system.
However, based on all the horror stories I've heard, I'm seriously thinking about re-considering my approach and settling for a different, simpler web-only product. It's frustrating to think that the majority of development time is not going to be spent on the app & cool technology but rather on bureaucracy, platform distribution,integration into app stores, and setting up cross-platform CI.
For example I make an IoT device (https://www.stationdisplay.com/) that gets configured via Bluetooth LE. I can not access BLE via mobile browser because most don't support it (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...).
Of course there are alternative methods like starting a wifi access point and having users connect to that but this makes it a lot more complicated for the end user. That results in un-happy customers and a lot of extra support costs.