Lets say we've reached this plateau where we can run these moderately limited apps almost everywhere, in a browser. Great! We've been here for some time now tho

Lets say we've reached this plateau where we can run these moderately limited apps almost everywhere, in a browser. Great! We've been here for some time now though, since HTTP/HTML has always run anywhere a browser could be found... All you're saying is that we have browsers in more places now. That is pretty fantastic, no kidding. There's still nothing wrong with saying that the foundation it all runs on mostly sucks for building application front ends. What's wrong with wanting better? How awesome would it be to have a safe, well engineered browser that wasn't limited to just HTTP, HTML, CSS and Javascript? Give me a full duplex network stack, native graphics and broader input controls. Give me file access and a multi-language runtime! Sandbox it all, I don't care!! Microsoft has done all of this (exceedingly well, in a very short time) with Silverlight which can run dynamically downloaded C#, F#, VB and Python modules on Windows, OS X and (limitedly) on Linux. It could definitely be done better by a more open group.