> "We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals! That's all we had. We were powerless under the big machine's unyielding central control. Then we escaped to the personal computer, autonomous, powerful. Then networks. The PC was soon rendered to be nothing but a "thin client," just a browser with very little software residing on our personal machines, the code being on network servers, which are under the control of administrators. Now to the web, nothing but a thin, thin browser for us. All the intelligence out there, on the net, our machines having become dumb terminals again."
I think yielding control back to remote administrators is ultimately a mistake if you care about freedom and privacy. It's why I've come to believe the web, as a platform, is in some ways a giant step backwards (and I do realize that's not a popular opinion here).
I like that Apple is slowing things down. Users are better served by well written native apps IMHO. It makes life more difficult for those of us who write software but also for those who want to sell to, spy on, or control users.