The security aspect was an interesting part of this piece, because one of the main reasons webapps took over from Windows apps is because they were perceived as more secure. I could disable ActiveX and Java and be reasonably confident that visiting a webpage would not pwn my computer, which I certainly couldn't do when downloading software from the Internet. And then a major reason mobile apps took over from webapps is because they were perceived as more secure, because they were immune to the type of XSRF and XSS vulnerabilities that webapps were vulnerable to.
Consumers don't think about security the way an IT professional does. A programmer thinks of all the ways that a program could fuck up your computer; it's a large part of our job description. The average person is terrible at envisioning things that don't exist or contemplating the consequences of hypotheticals that haven't happened. Their litmus test for whether a platform is secure is "Have I been burned by software on this platform in the past?" If they have been burned enough times by the current incumbent, they start looking around for alternatives that haven't screwed them over yet. If they find anything that does what they need it to do and whose authors promise that it's more secure, they'll switch. Extra bonus points if it has added functionality like fitting in your pocket or letting you instantly talk with anyone on earth.
The depressing corollary of this is that security is not selected for by the market. The key attribute that customers select for is "has it screwed me yet?", which all new systems without obvious vulnerabilities can claim because the bad guys don't have time or incentive to write exploits for them yet. Somebody who actually builds a secure system will be spending resources securing it that they won't be spending evangelizing it; they'll lose out to systems that promise security (and usually address a few specific attacks on the previous incumbent) . And so the tech industry will naturally oscillate on a ~20-year cycle with new platforms replacing old ones, gaining adoption on better convenience & security, attracting bad actors who take advantage of their vulnerabilities, becoming unusable because of the bad actors, and then eventually being replaced by fresh new platforms.
On the plus side, this is a full-employment theorem for tech entrepreneurs.