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I agree that the ability to load apps is desirable. For that reason, given a choice, I would categorically reject any tablet that doesn't come with either an app marketplace or the ability to side-load apps. Unfortunately, right now, that would eliminate *every* e-ink-based tablet on the market, as far as I can tell, short of rooting the Sony or Nook Touch readers.
Maybe I should just wait a few months for actual Mirasol-based Android tablets to appear.
That said, I disagree with your assertion that web apps are slow, clumsy, and inefficient. Apparently you haven't seen the ports of Doom and Quake that ran/run entirely in JavaScript. (Okay, I'll grant you inefficient, but slow and clumsy, they are not.) The development environment for browser-based apps is still in its infancy compared with desktop apps, but that doesn't mean that they will always be lame imitations of their native app cousins....
The main reason that custom apps are the primary delivery mechanism for tablets and phones is that you can trivially sell a custom app on official app stores, whereas it's relatively hard to sell access to a web page.... It has nothing to do with the browser not being up to the task by any stretch of the imagination.
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