This same argument could be made about browsers depending on the value one places on specific advances.
The original author is arguing there will be a point where there’s simply nothing new to add to the browser because it will do everything the OS does. There are any number of ways to argue just not how it works.
Re:When will web browsers be complete?
by grishka on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @09:12AM
(#24918313)
I personally don't think browsers need to be able to do stuff like exposing USB, Bluetooth and MIDI to websites. They aren't a substitute for a real OS as an app platform, and they should stop trying to become one. They're for reading (hyper)text, writing text (including filling forms), and watching videos.
An aside: as someone who comes from Android app development and now makes a hobby project that includes a web interface, making the browser do what I want it to feels like I'm building a UI in a Word document, complete with macros. The ability to have this free-flowing text that isn't contained in anything, this whole concept of "inline elements" still hurts my head. I'm too used to real UI frameworks where any text is only allowed to exist inside a TextView.
How much did it though? Strictly speaking, an OS is an abstraction on top of hardware that applications are written against. That's it. OSes of 2007 did a good job of abstracting the hardware away from applications. They also weren't as user-hostile as the modern ones, so one could argue that they were better. Operating systems had been feature-complete for quite a while. Those yearly updates serve no practical purpose.