Who wrote the browser? The window manager? The compiler, assembler, and linker? What about computer games? I don't see us doing Crysis in Javascript any time soon.
The web is great for some things, but some things aren't everything.
I bet most computer users have never used a bash shell. I still prefer the world with it to a hypothetical one without it. Same goes for high end computer games.
whatever i said is from common endusers perspective and not from YC news reader's(who are mostly techies) point of view - just like the way we switch our browser right now ... we will be able to do the same with the OS!! or even better, there will be multiple browser OS preinstalled, you pick what you want....
as far as h/w platform is concern it would be too early to make a call, we may think right now that intel will lead the market/platform as they now support both (PC & MAC) but i wont be surprised if there are new players... especially from taiwan and china!!!
And even if intel dominates the microprocessor market, I really wonder how would a common man will differentiate a MAC laptop with Lenovo's thinkpad because all they have installed is the same Browser-OS (chrome, safari etc.) on the same platform (intel), with the same specs(say 4GB RAM, 5 USB ports, 2HDMI, same display card.... etc.) and almost everything else is on the cloud .... i guess then it would be all about speed, power and exterior look/design of the laptop??!!!
Please, exactly, tell me what a browser-OS is. Are we talking about something like Chrome OS, which looks like it will be an OS whose primary (edit: or even sole?) purpose is to run a browser? Then it's basically just a crippled version of what we already have. Or would we actually be talking browser-as-an-OS-properly, where some hypothetical browser decides to take up the mantle of process management, drivers, etc?
I don't doubt that lots of interesting things will pop up on the web. But "browser-as-that-thing-I-spend-a-lot-of-time-in" is very, very different from any sane definition of "browser-as-an-OS".
The web is great for some things, but some things aren't everything.