[tdavis]

The difference is that your application server doesn't render HTML; there is no view that produces HTML and sends it as the HTTP response. It's just flat HTML, served up by a generic web server.

This means, among other things, you don't need server-side URL routing or templates. (You need routing for the REST layer, but that can usually be dynamically generated.)

It's just a much stricter separation: the client deals with view logic and HTML and all that, the server deals with pure business logic behind defined interfaces and data formats.