Edit: This is a "talk to sales" framework and ionic is 50€ per month as the absolute cheapest option. This is essentially an ad then.
React Native doesn’t use HTML. It has its own set of base tags (eg 'Text', 'Image', 'ScrollView') that are then translated to native components.
(Though, to complicate matters further, 'React Native for Web' exists, and translates those into HTML tags https://necolas.github.io/react-native-web/docs/ )
Also Ionic is definitely free and open source: https://ionicframework.com/framework
https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/03/remembering-apples-sweet-solu...
It wasn't only games, but having been there the cambrian explosion following the appstore's release was very much 95% games (much to Jobs' dismay).
> WebOS’s apps were as good as any other platforms apps and were PWAs unless I’m mistaken.
They were built out of "web technologies" (HTML and javascript) but they were not PWAs as they were significantly augmented with native components and concepts, none of which were part of the browser (even as proprietary extensions). That's like calling Firefox a PWA because it's built out of XML and Javascript (or was, not sure that's still the case).
iOS' first draft (pre appstore) was pretty much just web pages you pinned to your springboard (which you can still do). There were a few allowances for removing browser chrome and the like, or providing a few icons, but for the most part it was exactly what you'd run in a browser.