What Even Is an OS Now?

The piece argues that recent AI advances are collapsing long-standing boundaries in computing: between backend and frontend, between programmers and users, and between web and native apps. The writer uses personal anecdotes - an early machine that booted straight to BASIC and later experiences building macOS tools using English as a programming language - to show how everyday people can now conjure bespoke programs for themselves. Small, idiosyncratic problems that never justified commercial apps (getting a better weather forecast for Roscoe Village, choosing which road home, or detecting an unexpected meeting) will be solved by one-off applications that serve one or two people. Software distribution will shift from prefabricated fixed-function products toward shared building blocks and on-device generation of apps.

That shift undermines the core rationale of modern operating systems, which have existed primarily to partition and control code coming from strangers. If most software is user-created, malleable, and locally trustworthy, strict isolation and the existing app model make less sense. In response, the writer is building a phone platform designed not to run boxed apps but to assemble applications on demand on the device itself. The piece frames this as an inevitable, destabilizing transition in which AI removes old limits and forces a return to a childlike expectation that computers can do whatever you imagine.