[__d]

I agree -- a browser wasn't needed at the time. But without one, they're not practical for use as a desktop/laptop/phone OS today. And I also agree that a browser is not sufficient (as you cited, BeOS/Haiku, etc) but it is necessary.

As a related example, NewtonOS (Apple's MessagePad/eMate OS), did have a couple of HTTP 1.1 / HTML 2.0 browsers. But it wasn't able to support SSL/TLS, nor JavaScript, and as a result using one today is impractical.

The world has moved on since the 90's. Some evolutionary lines had features that were lost.