The Browser is the New Operating System

Background

On January 9th, 2007 technology changed forever: Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world. Unveiling a new full display touchscreen, iPhones immediately established a new bar for beauty, usability, and advanced functionality among mobile devices that would become both the envy and standard of interface design for the next decade. Never before had a phone been able to offer a reliable graphical touch experience for all functionality, and most impressive of all, the original iPhone shipped with a fully functional web browser in Safari for iOS, ushering in the era of mobile-first web design and always-available ubiquitous computing.

Amidst all of the groundbreaking announcements at the launch of the iPhone, there was one story missing that may seem mysterious looking back from 2025: there was no mention of an app store. This is because Steve Job’s original vision for developing apps for the iPhone was not by creating Native Apps for mobile, but instead by creating Web Apps. Here is a clip of the original announcement: Steve Jobs Introduces Web Apps

The Power of Web Apps

Any software developer could simply choose to design a mobile version of their web site and offer great experiences to all mobile users, not just iPhone owners, using the same familiar technologies they are already experienced with, and without the need for any proprietary software frameworks, licenses, or subscriptions. Security would be automatically handled by the built-in security sandboxing enforced in all web browsers, allowing Web App code to execute safely on all devices without the need for manual evaluation, and eliminating security reviews, approval delays, and other chokepoints standing between software developers and customers using their apps anywhere there is a web browser, on both mobile and desktop devices. No longer would the hardware architecture or operating system determine what apps can be run, web browsers and the apps built on top of them are true universal targets for development and computation by design for all platforms.

Web App developers are free to integrate their own payment systems and keep 100% of the profits, without any listing fees or need to maintain registered accounts with Apple or Google. Web Apps can also not be restricted due to delisting from a storefront, since they are basically just a more advanced form of a cached web site that often includes offline-functionality and sharing capabilities. Best of all, the entire web ecosystem benefits by promoting Web Apps, including Apple and Android mobile devices, Chromebooks, and any desktop system with a modern web browser including Windows, Linux, and macOS (desktop Firefox currently requires a plugin to run Web Apps, but not for much longer).

Installing Web Apps

Installing Web Apps is even easier than using an app store, since there are no accounts to set up, payment profiles to maintain, and Web Apps will automatically update when Internet connections are restored instead of requiring a manual update process. While the exact techniques differ slightly depending on the browser, a successfully installed Web App will create an icon on the device that behaves much like a Native App, while also removing the usual web ornamentation such as address bars from the window and providing either a fullscreen or full-window view of the app content on mobile and desktop browsers. To preserve consistency over time, all user settings and data related to the web site behind the Web App is saved and stored locally, separately from the rest of your browsing data for privacy and security. For a more detailed overview of Steve Jobs original vision, here is a good introduction, and for Google’s version check this out.

Best of all, Web App technology is so simple that even sites that aren’t intentionally designed as Web Apps can still be installed as one, here are basic instructions for the most popular mobile and desktop platforms:

Installing Web Apps on iOS or iPadOS

1. On any web site, go to the page you want to install as a Web App.
2. Open the Sharing Menu and choose “Add to Home Screen”.
3. The page will now be added to the Home Screen with the same appearance at a natively installed app, will load in a full-screen view when launched, and will preserve its data and settings over time unless manually deleted by the user.

• Personal Note: I find web apps especially useful for sites like Uber, Facebook, Instagram, and weather apps where I don’t want to run a Native App that tries to access my contacts or device data.

Installing Web Apps on Android

1. On any web site, go to the page you want to install as a Web App.
2. Choose the 3-dot menu and choose “Add to Home Screen”.
3. The page will now be added to the Home Screen with the same appearance at a natively installed app, will load in a full-screen view when launched, and will preserve its data and settings over time unless manually deleted by the user.

Installing Web Apps on Desktop Safari

1. On any web site, go to the page you want to install as a Web App.
2. Choose either File > Add to Dock… or Sharing > Add to Dock…
3. The page will now be added to the Dock like other apps, will load in a full-screen view by default, and will preserve its data and settings over time unless manually deleted by the user.

Installing Web Apps on Desktop Chromium-Based Browsers (including Brave)

1. On any web site, go to the page you want to install as a Web App.
2. Depending on the web site, there are 2 methods of handling this:
3. If the site natively supports Web App functions, you will see an option to “Install…” the web site in the address bar on the right.
4. If the site does not natively support Web App functions, it can still be installed as a Web App by choosing “Cast, Save, and Share > Install Page as App…”.
5. A new icon will appear on the Dock or Desktop linking to the Web App URL, will load in a full-screen view when launched, and will preserve its data and settings over time unless manually deleted by the user.

Hardware Access for Modern Browsers

Almost all of the same hardware features that are made available for Native Apps are available through the browser as well, with one improvement: users remain in full control of site permissions for Web Apps, even when such settings are not normally available. This is especially powerful on mobile and portable devices where individual privacy settings are not always enabled for Native Apps, but for Web Apps permissions such as access to the camera, microphone, location services, Bluetooth, and more can be restricted to prevent unnecessary data leakage from sites that really don’t need the extra permissions, and are only looking to leak user data to trackers and 3rd-parties for advertising.

Persistent Storage for Modern Browsers

The ability to persist web data inside Web Apps allows them to function even with only intermittent Internet connectivity, providing what is known as offline-first functionality. By caching remote data locally and recording user input first inside the web app, such data can be synchronized with the cloud at a later time without bothering the user, providing an experience similar to classical desktop applications, including the ability to use local authentication such as biometrics instead of passwords. Additionally there are no ongoing charges for hosting your own data and documents on your own devices, eliminating an entire class of charges compared with cloud AI services, and most of the previous storage limitations no longer apply to Web Apps thanks to IndexedDB and OPFS.

The ability for Web Apps to cache and store data offline until Internet connectivity is restored has been at the heart of the success of Google’s ChromeOS and Chromebook series of devices since 2011, proving the viability, sufficiency, and reliability of this approach to mobile computing directly in the marketplace, for both consumers and enterprises. These features continue to improve over time to approximate the full features of desktop applications, with Notifications API, Bluetooth, Presentation API, WebUSB, and more outside-the-browser features continuing to appear as standards develop.

Beyond Offline-First: Local-First Web Apps

Beyond Offline-First web app architectures, the more recent Local-First software movement has been growing in popularity, and has inspired the development of the Rana ecosystem. Combined with peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, Local-First Web Apps can provide a foundation for ubiquitous computing, especially for artificial intelligence applications, while also preserving end-user data privacy unlike traditional cloud software. Here is a comparison of why Local-First Web Apps will replace both Native Apps and Cloud Services in the long run:

Web-Enabled App Feature Comparison

• = Payment processors often charge between 1-3% fees

Local-First Web Apps are the Future of AI/ML

No discussion of application technologies in 2025 would be complete without mentioning artificial intelligence and machine learning. At the time of this writing, cloud-based AI services are the feature leaders and claim the majority of the market share, but costs can become prohibitive as computing credits burn up quickly when using advanced AI models, or even when just exploring system capabilities. For example, OpenAI’s Deep Research system can take up to 30 minutes to compile its findings, churning through compute credits in parallel as multiple subsystems perform and process searches, in addition to the $200/month price tag required just to run it. Despite these high costs, ChatGPT Pro is currently losing money according to Sam Altman, calling into question the sustainability of their current cloud-hosted architecture to provide this level of service, not to mention the privacy risks that are necessary when uploading private data to cloud services.

Local-first Web Apps that include locally hosted AI models are run completely on end-user devices, keeping user data private without any need to upload anything to the cloud, while also running such AI models and agents securely inside of web sandboxes where the harm they could cause is limited if anything were to go wrong, unlike native AI systems that can permanently alter or delete data from other programs. Local AI can’t run out of credits or incur gigantic charges just for testing the capabilities of a system, and although it might not be as fast as a high powered server in the cloud, local AI doesn’t have to be shared with anyone else either, guaranteeing low-latency and high performance for most users on only moderate hardware. To improve performance further, Rana uses P2P networking technologies to allow users to combine the computing power of all of their devices including desktops, servers, phones, tablets, and any other device capable of running a modern web browser with WebGPU support to work together on AI and ML tasks across large clusters of devices. Never again is there a need to run out of computing credits, all user data can stay on user devices, and all devices can unlock their untapped AI potential safely and privately.

The Browser is the New Operating System

AI offers entirely new ways to develop software and to create the apps the world needs for the future. We have seen the costs incurred when users hand over control of their data to 3rd-parties and depend on cloud services, and the overhead of depending on centrally controlled app stores. The tide is already starting to turn against the app stores of the past, and the solution to these issues has always been available via web app technologies, it has just been sorely neglected and ignored. Let us rebuild the world of software to support universal open standards, end-user data sovereignty, and security by default for all software, without gatekeepers between developers and users. Web browsers can provide the universal architecture, hardware agnostic, cross-platform runtime environment that breaks free of any specific operating system, allowing Local-First Web Apps the ability to run anywhere and everywhere, safely and securely, while restoring control back to end-users.