Cordova does indeed do this, and gives you access to iOS hardware APIs. This doesn't.
With this in mind, the reason I made it was for projects which don't require those things. There is no middleware here, just a very simple Xcode project with a couple of code modifications.
You can literally drop an existing web app into this and get going! :D
When I looked at Cordova it was a complete mess and pain to deal with. The docs where confusing and out of date. I just needed a simple x-code project, not a kitchen sink that was installed in the attic for some reason.
This has always been pretty straightforward to me, it's a bit of an extra pain to debug iOS development on a non-OSX machine, but that's true of the parent link, too.
What's been a complete mess to deal with for you? And how long ago did you last use Cordova?
We tried to do that with our Cordova project and it wasn't this straightforward at all - we weren't even accessing the hardware. Some main points are behaviors when opening URLs, a completely unresponsive canvas, and slow rendering on the canvas.
Slowed rendering! Lower responsiveness! Non-native controls widgets! No good way to monetize them! Not able to take advantage of all native APIs! Can't use offline except with the limited storage APIs! Worse battery performance for demanding code!
No problem! I've forked the Android version from somebody else on Github and haven't made many changes to it yet, so the credit for that one should go to http://github.com/slymax.
I plan to make an Android one as simple as this. Google are working hard to make development easier but it's still a very poor experience compared to Xcode.
As this simply wraps a web view, and doesn't really add anything more than what Safari does, isn't the odds of it ever being accepted by the App Store very small?
Cordova apps are accepted because they do have an API into phone functions.
First app I ever built was a Cordova-based database of visa requirements for US Citizens. You could find a country by Name or see all countries that you could visit without a visa or with instant visa at the border.
I had dreams of using it myself when wandering the world without a local internet connection and seeing where I wanted to fly to next.
Apple rejected it saying it was nothing more than a web page wrapped in an app.
To add another anecdote, we just wrapped a webapp [0] and it was accepted. It's pretty easy to get into the app store, it's my understanding that Apple stopped truly vetting apps (there are some pretty terrible, broken apps on the app store approved by Apple).