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Approaches are very useful when all the characters have very similar skill sets (students at a wizard school, wandering martial artists, super-spies) but different styles.

Approaches are also very useful when everyone has drastically distinct skill sets enabled by extras and aspects, such as a psionic starship navigator, a cybernetic information network hacker, a bioware super-soldier, and a life-long trained courtier of intergalactic high culture working together. Rather than having everyone need to deal with the broad skill list (and, thereby, have lots of skills at +0 and +1), just avoid skills and focus on style.

In both cases, aspects and stunts are used to enable unusual actions (magic if not everyone has it, netrunning, hyperspace warping, etc.) and to allow specialization.

In other words, if the skill list would not serve to differentiate adequately or would be too long to manage, approaches are a wonderful replacement.

Plus it's much quicker to teach newcomers.