No OS has "taken off" because of the web. Windows is as cemented on desktop as ever, and ChromeOS (the only post-web desktop OS of note) has a fraction of a percent marketshare.
iOS initially had a web-app-only developer story (the "sweet solution"), but the quality gap between web and native apps was so undeniable that Apple reversed course and shipped a native SDK. It would be no different today.
The quality gap is not about buttons that look different. It's that nothing behaves consistently. Every site does its own custom thing, so users are forced into the lowest common denominator of interactivity (click or tap).
Examples: Gmail has its own fake windows, context menus, dropdowns, drag and drop, key equivalents, etc. and they all fall apart as soon as you try to do anything nontrivial with them. And it's been like this for 15 years, so I don't see any cause for optimism on this front.
iOS initially had a web-app-only developer story (the "sweet solution"), but the quality gap between web and native apps was so undeniable that Apple reversed course and shipped a native SDK. It would be no different today.
The quality gap is not about buttons that look different. It's that nothing behaves consistently. Every site does its own custom thing, so users are forced into the lowest common denominator of interactivity (click or tap).
Examples: Gmail has its own fake windows, context menus, dropdowns, drag and drop, key equivalents, etc. and they all fall apart as soon as you try to do anything nontrivial with them. And it's been like this for 15 years, so I don't see any cause for optimism on this front.