I really like your tone throughout and the length is perfect. It is difficult to put down something everyone uses without coming off as arrogant and rude. Even the calls to action at the end seem gentle enough to not spark flame wars. It's a fine line, someone may disagree with me on that.

I can see this becoming one of those canonical pages that is still being referenced 10 years later. Being short enough to share and simple enough to understand makes this a great resource. I have tried to convey similar feelings to people who love the applications you've used as examples. Maybe this will help.

Great use of images to demonstrate your points. Many articles lately seem to just add in unrelated images for no reason.

> HTML and CSS gave developers perfect visual control over what their interfaces looked like, allowing them to brand them and build experiences that were pixel-perfect according to their own ends

I'm not sure this is quite right. It takes a ton of work to get an HTML/CSS page to display properly in every browser. I think my response is specifically related to the use of the word "perfect" -- maybe something else like "total" would be more appropriate.

All I could think of while watching the clip from Minority Report was how tired my arms would get from all that full-range motion.

I like the submitted title better than the title on the actual page. You should consider revising it!