You must be young, that was exactly how things were for decades. Its just that it was called a driver, not an app but in effect it was same piece of software that unlocked the device for use. For monitors, often without proprietary driver, it would work only on some default vesa resolutions, not support all available refresh rates etc.
A monitor driver, at least in the form most people remember dealing with on Win32 systems, wasn't even a piece of software. It was just a .INF file containing the Windows equivalent to X modelines describing what modes and was only necessary if you either didn't have working EDID for whatever reason or wanted to go outside the range the monitor advertised working at.
Before these "drivers" had to be signed it was common for various graphics tweak tools to provide a method for building your own custom INF to "overclock" a monitor that only officially supported 60 Hz or whatever.
