Except with runtime safety, no installation process, no pointless scare popups when trying to run an app directly downloaded from the internet, and trivial distribution without random app store publishing rules getting in the way.
In a way - yes - it's almost like it was before the internet, but mostly because other ways to distribute and run applications have become such a hassle, partly for security reasons, but mostly for gatekeeping reasons by the "platform owners".
Apps like these were incredibly common on Windows from the late 90s-early 2010s era. They could do all this (except for the sandboxing thing). You just downloaded a single .exe file, and it ran self-contained, with all its dependencies statically linked, and it would work on practically any system.
On MacOS, the user facing model is still that you download an application, drop it
in the Applications folder, and it works.
The download of a single EXE to keep had a nice side-effect though, that it made it trivial to store (most) apps (or their installers) for future use. Not so sure if in-browser apps can do that (yet?) except maybe by saving an entire virtual machine containing the web browser with the app installed.
> You just downloaded a single .exe file, and it ran self-contained, with all its dependencies statically linked, and it would work on practically any system.
Yeah, but try that today (and even by 2010 that wouldn't work anymore). Windows will show a scare popup with a very hard to find 'run anyway' button, unless your application download is above a certain 'reputation score' or is code-signed with an expensive EV certificate.
> On MacOS, the user facing model is still that you download an application, drop it in the Applications folder, and it works.
Not really, macOS will tell you that it cannot verify that the app doesn't do any harm and helpfully offer to move the application into the trash bin (unless the app is signed and notarized - for which you'll need an Apple developer account, and AFAIK even then there will be a 'mild' warning popup that the app has been downloaded from the internet and whether you want to run it anyway). Apple is definitely nudging developers towards the app store, even on macOS.
Yes and Windows in that time period had massive issues with security and culture. The culture of downloading and running EXEs from the internet quickly caught up to everyone, and not in a good way.
Also the "big idea" is that those applications aren't portable. Now that primary computers for most people are phones, portable applications are much more important.
In a way - yes - it's almost like it was before the internet, but mostly because other ways to distribute and run applications have become such a hassle, partly for security reasons, but mostly for gatekeeping reasons by the "platform owners".