Right. No real access to contacts, camera, files/database, accelerometer, GPS, etc. We tried in vain with application cache, offline storage, etc. but not seeing contacts/camera was a show-stopper. Even location isn't the same as native GPS because users get a warning on opening the HTML that usually scares them away.
The article is about using one (of the many) methods to develop native apps for Windows 8. This is not like PhoneGap - you have full access to the resources available on the device. Don't mistake the composition technologies (CSS, HTML, JavaScript) as == non-native app.