6 ms·

> If anything, they overcorrected, dragged kicking and screaming into allowing apps at all. A lot of people forget this, but it's true: Apple didn't want _anyo

by irq 7y ago

> If anything, they overcorrected, dragged kicking and screaming into allowing apps at all. A lot of people forget this, but it's true: Apple didn't want _anyone_ to be able to make native apps on iOS except themselves. That they changed their minds and helped devs make a ton of money tends to erase this fact of history.

bobsil1 7y ago
Yup, it was going to be an embedded, first-party personal organizer.
wahnfrieden 7y ago
How do we know this was their actual strategic internal decision vs a practical one because an SDK for third party applications wasn’t ready yet or not important at launch?
- irq 7y ago
  Because of the WWDC events in which they touted their web-based API at the time as being all one needed to compete with Apple's own native apps. That turned out to be completely untrue and they backtracked.
  - richardwhiuk 7y ago
    I'm not convinced they believed that at the time.
  - wahnfrieden 7y ago
    That would have still been the right thing for them to say publicly if they did intend to release an SDK later though. Since it’s been a long time now, I’ve wondered if anyone’s spoken to their internal positioning.
- jnaina 7y ago
  Steve Jobs was very careful about the “Osborne effect”. Even if they had plans for an App SDK as part of the future iPhone roadmap, he would have never divulged it, to prevent customers from deffering purchases
empath75 7y ago
Imagine if they had announced apps were coming for the iPhone, and potential customers waited for apps to come out and app developers waited for people to buy the phone. Apple basically needed a take it or leave it strategy for the first release.
nathanvanfleet 7y ago
Still props to them that they saw it would be a benefit to the platform to allow it, and did so pretty quickly.
kijiki 7y ago
I have this conspiracy theory that I half believe: it was all a ruse. Apple knew that there would be huge pushback against a walled garden appstore with Apple in absolute control, and huge pushback on them taking a 30% cut. So they started with "just write web apps". But of course, they also inexplicably made the first iPhone 2G only! Flagship phones that shipped many months before the iPhone had 3G. Why cut that particular corner, and not any others in their otherwise $$$-is-no-object new wonderphone? You can do a much better job hiding low bandwidth and high latency in a native app, especially since app assets get downloaded once (probably over wifi) at app install time. So by essentially making app developers beg for access to their native platform, they radically reduced the anger at their wildly locked-down appstore and their 30% cut. And it seemed a little suspicious how quickly they were able to deliver a 3rd-party SDK and developer documentation.
- joachimma 7y ago
  Wasn't Palm taking a 80% cut in their glory days? (My google skills fail me) I heard developers saying that 30% was a great deal at the time.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    I think it was Handango that set the 30% expectation. They were the first with such a high cut I think, and was among the first app sites for most of the PDAs of the time. 30% was pretty offensive after years of shareware.
    - Theodores 7y ago
      But then apps cost pennies compared to the software we were used to. Office cost many hundreds of dollars and I regularly paid £400+ for PC programs that did just one thing. £350 for Photoshop was a steal. But then apps came along costing a small handful of dollars. They also did things you could not do on your PC due to the connectivity, the camera and the sensors. Everything changed when it came to price expectations.
  - irq 7y ago
setr 7y ago
Wasn’t the original idea that apps weren’t required, as html5 would be sufficient? Jobs initialy believed in webapps. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything about no kinds of third party applications on ios at all
- distances 7y ago
  Almost every platform seems to have believed in web apps at some point. Nokia did an attempt with Symbian, Palm had WebOS, Samsung tried that with Tizen, Apple with iPhones, Microsoft for Windows 8, Mozilla's Firefox OS... I'm sure I forgot a few. All attempts failed quite completely.
  - johnnycab 7y ago
    >I'm sure I forgot a few. All attempts failed quite completely. You forgot BlackBerry, who failed themselves spectacularly by becoming a patent troll. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190228/17170141697/blackberry-continues-shameful-descent-into-patent-trolling-suing-twitter.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190228/17170141697/black...

by irq 7y ago

bobsil1 7y ago

Yup, it was going to be an embedded, first-party personal organizer.

wahnfrieden 7y ago

How do we know this was their actual strategic internal decision vs a practical one because an SDK for third party applications wasn’t ready yet or not important at launch?

irq 7y ago
Because of the WWDC events in which they touted their web-based API at the time as being all one needed to compete with Apple's own native apps. That turned out to be completely untrue and they backtracked.
- richardwhiuk 7y ago
  I'm not convinced they believed that at the time.
- wahnfrieden 7y ago
  That would have still been the right thing for them to say publicly if they did intend to release an SDK later though. Since it’s been a long time now, I’ve wondered if anyone’s spoken to their internal positioning.
jnaina 7y ago
Steve Jobs was very careful about the “Osborne effect”. Even if they had plans for an App SDK as part of the future iPhone roadmap, he would have never divulged it, to prevent customers from deffering purchases

empath75 7y ago

Imagine if they had announced apps were coming for the iPhone, and potential customers waited for apps to come out and app developers waited for people to buy the phone. Apple basically needed a take it or leave it strategy for the first release.

nathanvanfleet 7y ago

Still props to them that they saw it would be a benefit to the platform to allow it, and did so pretty quickly.

kijiki 7y ago

I have this conspiracy theory that I half believe: it was all a ruse. Apple knew that there would be huge pushback against a walled garden appstore with Apple in absolute control, and huge pushback on them taking a 30% cut. So they started with "just write web apps". But of course, they also inexplicably made the first iPhone 2G only! Flagship phones that shipped many months before the iPhone had 3G. Why cut that particular corner, and not any others in their otherwise $$$-is-no-object new wonderphone? You can do a much better job hiding low bandwidth and high latency in a native app, especially since app assets get downloaded once (probably over wifi) at app install time. So by essentially making app developers beg for access to their native platform, they radically reduced the anger at their wildly locked-down appstore and their 30% cut. And it seemed a little suspicious how quickly they were able to deliver a 3rd-party SDK and developer documentation.

joachimma 7y ago
Wasn't Palm taking a 80% cut in their glory days? (My google skills fail me) I heard developers saying that 30% was a great deal at the time.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  I think it was Handango that set the 30% expectation. They were the first with such a high cut I think, and was among the first app sites for most of the PDAs of the time. 30% was pretty offensive after years of shareware.
  - Theodores 7y ago
    But then apps cost pennies compared to the software we were used to. Office cost many hundreds of dollars and I regularly paid £400+ for PC programs that did just one thing. £350 for Photoshop was a steal. But then apps came along costing a small handful of dollars. They also did things you could not do on your PC due to the connectivity, the camera and the sensors. Everything changed when it came to price expectations.
- irq 7y ago

setr 7y ago

Wasn’t the original idea that apps weren’t required, as html5 would be sufficient? Jobs initialy believed in webapps. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything about no kinds of third party applications on ios at all

distances 7y ago
Almost every platform seems to have believed in web apps at some point. Nokia did an attempt with Symbian, Palm had WebOS, Samsung tried that with Tizen, Apple with iPhones, Microsoft for Windows 8, Mozilla's Firefox OS... I'm sure I forgot a few. All attempts failed quite completely.
- johnnycab 7y ago
  >I'm sure I forgot a few. All attempts failed quite completely. You forgot BlackBerry, who failed themselves spectacularly by becoming a patent troll. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190228/17170141697/blackberry-continues-shameful-descent-into-patent-trolling-suing-twitter.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190228/17170141697/black...