Like an application platform (forget documents) built entirely on wasm, and with capability based security. That would let you launch apps made within the platform just as easily as you currently open a website.
The platform would need some primitives for rendering, UI, accessibility and input handling. But hopefully a lot of those APIs could be much lower level than the web provides today. Move all the high level abstractions into library code that developers link into their wasm bundles. (For example, I’m thinking about most of what css does today.)
That would allow much faster innovation in layout engines and other things the web does today, and a smaller api surface area should lead to better security.
It’s quite possible to build something like this today. It’s just a lot of work.
Maybe when chatgpt is a bit smarter, it might be able to do the lion’s share of the work to make this happen.
In the end you will end up with the platform / OS which will lose to competitors because of performance and lack of features and do not expect it to be secure. Developers will manage to leave some holes and hackers will find their way.
The web's sandboxed security model makes it better for users. And that in turn drives popularity.
I think the same could be true for a good application platform. The trick is using the sandboxing + capability based security model to enable "new" usability features that traditional applications can never deliver.
