TL;DR you can, but you lose the ability to pass data through install.

Absolutely. The unfortunately side effect is when these users open your app, you won't know where they came from. Using text-me-the-app allows us to link a desktop link click to the same user downloading on mobile and opening the app. You lose the ability to pass data through install, and you lose install attribution. It's a tradeoff--for you, personalizing onboarding, rewarding users or having install attribution may be less important than taking them straight to the App Store.

You can either point desktop users to the App Store on an app-wide basis (https://dashboard.branch.io/#/settings/link) or on a per-link basis using the reserved key $desktop_url (as Abbey pointed out). Let me know if this is unclear.