>The future of mobile ought to be something like Dr Dave envisaged decades ago = a local app written in an interpreted language with local cached data, that can work on multiple platforms.

Yes and how did that pan out?
How many Foxpro apps are running on DOS and Unix? (A few years ago I heard of a Unix holdout in Texas somewhere)
One code base on multiple platforms = chaos.
The principal reason that developers flocked to Windows was that it was a universally accepted standard.
No need to make the case- the browser is full of flaws- but it's the only thing that even pretends to be a standard.