This is a dramatic and overly pessimistic estimation. The next WWDC is about ten months away and, if everything goes according to the general plan, in ten months there'll be no way of establishing the web as a premium platform anymore.
Context is king. It's the holy grail of UX development. What we now call "mobile computing" is really just the beginning of this idea. The true benefits of mobile computing hasn't shown itself much until now; I believe we will be experiencing it soon.
Call me slow on this one, but I've only started to feel alarmed since the introduction of the M7 co-processor in iPhone 5S. On hindsight, this is a clear test bed for what will soon materialize as the iWatch. With yesterday's acquisition of PrimeSense, I felt like someone slapped me on the face and prompted me to write this.
The iWatch will not be a standalone device; it will be the landscape-changing companion device to existing iOS devices. In that regard, the web will stay alive as an alternative to native apps. An alternative that's about to become poorer and poorer.
The iWatch will not have a browser. Its interface doesn't allow it to. It's a hub of contextual data. "So what" you might say. I don't pretend to be a visionary, but explaining the "what" presently makes me feel like I'm explaining the iPad to a person in 2009. Software interactions are becoming gradually more passive throughout the years. With the appropriate amount of context, e.g. environmental, geographical and motional (I'm neglecting temporal and historical, because these are basic capabilities that are easily implementable on any platform), it's very doable to infer proper states to an app, such that the amount of interaction required to consume information is rendered minimal. Most apps can be augmented with the accurate amount of context data. Given Apple's track record on providing APIs, this integration shouldn't be too hard; but more importantly for us, the API probably won't be available to webapps.
"Well, my Facebook app already posts my location below chat bubbles so I don't see the big deal". Well, my computer already does all the things an iPad does so I don't see how the latter will sell.
A revived category of devices, whose form factor and functionalities completely sidestep what the web has tried to optimize for the longest time: content presentation. The contextual revolution happens soon and we're missing the boat like we did in 2007. As a person whose life goal is to empower people through technology, I welcome these devices with open arms. As a developer who wants to work on the web for his own set of reasons, I am beginning to wonder where we'll be in two years. I am giving myself one year to act; meanwhile, I believe the countdown has started.