"Will users forget they can just type a URL in, and instead install everything through their friendly neighborhood web app store? (Don't laugh.)"
Who's laughing? All but two of the Web browser manufacturers (Opera and Mozilla, both of which are losing market share) seem to have vested interests in doing exactly this.
This reminds me of Steve demoing the first iPhone, when he pulled out the numpad in the Phone app and called dialing a number "real last-century."
I think soon we will all have the bookmarked websites we regularly visit as browser-apps (contacts, if you will) with most of the rest being taken care of by hyperlinks, and once in a while one will have to pull out the URL bar to actually type an address in manually.
It's happened already, with bookmarks and search replacing URLs. Googling for Sony is faster than typing in sony.com, so why not?
The address bar would have faded into near-obsolescence if browsers hadn't smartened it up a bit, making it search your history and commonly used sites.
Yes, and add to that the fact that typing on a mobile device is painful, and you have a strong usability argument for doing away with the URL bar entirely.
Who's laughing? All but two of the Web browser manufacturers (Opera and Mozilla, both of which are losing market share) seem to have vested interests in doing exactly this.