The browser-only thing was the way they weaseled out of the controversy of "no outside apps". Really, I'm not sure I would even mind it so much (I'm pretty deeply into the web-app side, and have a lot of respect for what you can do with it) if they had provided a good SDK for doing that, with clear documentation of the differences, and maybe an implementation of Google Gears to give you some local storage. But it's pretty clear that the whole thing was a last-minute backpedal, not a plan...