> I am not sure this really matters.
It matters by a factor of about ten to one.
> The browser is a local app too.
Browsers are html interpreters. They interpret other languages too.
> My understanding is that the underlying features (horsepower) needed
> for the more powerful browser are needed by writers of apps.
I just went through a blog post on the development process for iPhone
apps. Development is done in Objective C so it appears that we have
compiled code on the iPhone. Now I would guess that your typical app
makes calls out to the web. There may be a compiled API for this or it
might use Javascript. This piece may be interpreted but it's probably
just used to send and receive data. When you are running completely in
the context of a browser, then everything is interpreted.
> Without getting into symantics, there is a fuzzy line between
> applications (apps), web browsers, and operating systems (just ask
> Microsoft when they were asked to split IE from windows).
Microsoft chose a crappy implementation. Please don't taint other
browsers with their bad decisions.
> Bottom line, and my original point is that the need for processing
> power will go up, not down.
I used to work on Firefox for Mozilla. I've done web programming.
I've done performance work too. Are you talking as a software engineer
with a development background? If so, could you be far more specific
as I don't see what you see.
I turned on my old Pentium 3 laptop that I got around 2000. I used
it to run a test and to do that, I had to get on the web to download
an app that I wrote on another system. The Pentium 3 laptop was able
to run Google Mail and other websites just fine.
There are lots of people that buy Atom netbooks. Those things have
much less computing horsepower than my Core i7s but there are many
that apparently get along just fine with them.
