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The browser turning into an operating system (or rather a separate meta-platform that provides a common wrapper over operating system services) has already happ
by flohofwoe 4y ago
The browser turning into an operating system (or rather a separate meta-platform that provides a common wrapper over operating system services) has already happened a long time ago.
And while many web APIs indeed 'suck', they're still roughly in the same ballpark as traditional OS APIs when it comes to legacy features, unfixable design warts and general 'pain of use' (e.g. it's not like native development is all rainbow-farting unicorns, while web development is eternal pain and suffering - it's both 'mildly annoying' most of the time).
- philistine 4y agoThe opposing opinion would be that changes of vital OS features has happened to all the operating systems. Users expect a new version of software to run on newer operating systems. The web has never deprecated anything close to vital. We're stuck, seemingly, with everything ever conceived.
- flohofwoe 4y agoI would argue that most users expect that their software continues to work on new operating system versions without being forced to upgrade (which is easy for free software, but less so if the upgrade costs money and the users are entirely happy with the feature set of their current version). PS: also, looking at Windows specifically, new operating system API layers don't necessarily mean that they are an improvement over the older APIs.
- tacotime 4y agoFirefox has deprecated support for FTP, RSS feeds. Web extensions using manifest version 2 are being deprecated in Chrome, removing substantial capabilities. Whether these features are "close to vital" is debatable but certainly some functionality that used to be ubiquitous are being removed.
- philistine 4y agoThat’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking more of deprecating some elements of JavaScript that prevent speed gains.