Even big framework web apps on a core 2 duo running old Firefox, that is nowhere as bad as early Java trying to run something as a web applet.

I remember staring at that crazy Java applet load spinner and hating Java, and this was already in the early 2000s (on the first white iBook running Mac OS 9). It would have been much worse 7 years earlier.

It was really just the JVM’s startup time and the clunky AWT-based UI that made Java lose on web clients. Flash easily dethroned Java there because it started almost instantaneously and could do fancy animations (recall dial-up speeds meant video wasn’t an option).

>Peak UX usability was native UIs in the 1990s and early 2000s

So much this. Give me Win2K and Office2K style applications - multiple tiled or overlapping windows, modeless views, regular menus and toolbars, context sensitive right click menus, etc. over this single pane with a hamburger button and search box crap any day of the week.