Wanna Make Your Life Hard? There is an app for that, or maybe 100,000

These days it is not uncommon to find some one with 100+ apps installed on his/her phone (maybe you are one of those?). I imagine most of those apps are used once or twice and will never be used, the only time you see them (or their icon) is when you scroll past by them to get to your 2 or 3 (or five) apps you actually use frequently.

This app mania clutters UIs and waste a lot time, and I can't help but thinking "do we simply forget all the lessons and progress of last 10-15 years simply because a device came along with attractive aesthetics?"

What happened to "browser is the operating system?" in the days that most desktop apps are moving to cloud and being delivered thru browsers, why is it that most (if not all) mobile apps are native code? Yes native apps still have certain capability that browsers do not offer YET, but with HTML 5 and Web Kit (and maybe with a little bit of industry support to close the remaining gaps) browser based apps would be sufficient for large majority of mobile apps.

Don't get me wrong, there will always be need for native apps, but much like with desktop, over time only a few apps will be privileged to be native, most other will and should be browser based standard, write one, run on any browser apps.

This makes development of mobile apps simpler and more cost effective, instead of maintaining three apps for iPhone, Andriod and Blackberry, most developer only maintain one version, and you only install a few apps that truly need to be native apps.