Right now with the web we are prisoners of our own devices. We took a document fetching/presentation system and beat on it until we had an application platform

Right now with the web we are prisoners of our own devices. We took a document fetching/presentation system and beat on it until we had an application platform, and we're feeling the pain. We have built workarounds on top of workarounds to try to make applications look better, work better, and better to develop, but we're still stuck with the browser and its limitations. Reading some of the posts here, it seems like some people have developed Stockholm syndrome for the browser. What we have turned the web into is a resurrection of mainframe computing. Our terminals are just a little bit better this time. It was the only vector for exceptional ease for the user so we flocked there, the trouble is, talking to the terminals makes up have to do a lot of less than ideal things on the serverside. Sure we may have prettied up some parts and made more and more tech for talking to the terminals, but its not great. We and bitched and moaned about the state of the terminals and over the last decade they've even became a smidge better.