I think you're right, and that phenomenon extended well beyond desktop environments, too. The same thing happened to many existing web sites, with "responsive

I think you're right, and that phenomenon extended well beyond desktop environments, too. The same thing happened to many existing web sites, with "responsive web design" and "mobile-first design" starting to be heavily hyped at the time. The usability of such web sites in desktop browsers was typically severely degraded, and the mobile and tablet experiences were also often still pretty bad, as well. I see the Slashdot redesign of that era as being a good example of that happening. That web site became unusable with every device I had at the time. Even today, I find web sites like that to be awkward and unpleasant to use. It was a much better user experience when separate desktop and mobile versions of a given web site were more common.