- Everything is already one terrible interface for everything. Make a better interface.

- The better companies will minimize this. We still depend on cloud services like Gmail, github et.. on a day to day basis. And they still mess it up occasionally.

- There are ready designers who know nothing about UI design for each particular device pumping out apps.

- Look at the linux ecosystem. I think its working out.

* I don't know what programs you're using. I think the iOS interface is great and rife with amazing UIs by both Apple and 3rd party devs that I enjoy using every day. If your devices have terrible UIs that are non-unique, that's your business.

* I rely on those services via clients that beat the hell out of the native web offering. Cloud services are an inbuilt way of life, cloud or web-based apps can go die in a fire as far as I'm concerned. They have two benefits: Developer simplicity and access from anywhere. Everything else is just downsides.

* Of course, but making it easier doesn't help. Just like with all fields, most programmers and software designers are amateur and lazy. IMO making even easier for these people to create terrible apps and making it the cornerstone of a mobile OS is a really bad idea.

* ...You're joking right? I don't even know where to begin with that one, except to look at Linux on the desktop numbers and then come back to me.

The way I see it is this: the apps, the GUI and the underlining OS would be completely decoupled from eachother (much like Linux/BSD and Gnome/KDE). The OS would be free software, because that is what FOSS is good at (not end user facing software).

For the apps and GUIs there would be a marketplace (or ideally several), where people/companies can sell or give away for free their software. Most GUIs and apps would suck (just like most apps suck today). But there would be a few ones, which are truly great, much better than Google or even Apple could ever make them. And these would not be made by big companies, but by small startups consisting of creative people.

All software can update. There is nothing fundamentally different between a web apps' ability to update and a desktop applications' ability to update. If you need any proof of this, just look at Chrome.

Once you run software on your computer, if that software can connect to the internet, it can update itself!

there is something fundamentally different, you can choose not to update a native appp, you can also choose to run an old verion. you can also continue a native app if the creator decides its not worthwhile, or google buys them out

chrome is the exception not the rule

My point is that there is nothing* preventing any native app from including code to update itself. Over time, I believe that more and more native apps will do this. For example, Firefox is moving in that direction now.

* Except for in the case of iOS. Apple has a policy that apps are not allowed to update themselves. But there's still no technical limitation.

Right so we're discussing the reality of the situation, which is that web apps would have no choice but to force update (as they would be run server-side and hence the client wouldn't have a choice) and that native apps could be possibly, but aren't.

This is another Visual Basic craze, in which someone creates a way for non-programmers to program and everyone piles on thinking it will be the next big thing.

See my post below (the one that the majority of development will be in HTML/CSS/JS in a few years). I don't want to copy & paste it here.