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My read is that their APIs weren't ready in time, so "make a web app" was a stop-gap they tossed out to developers while they were preparing UIKit for its 1.0 r

• snowwrestler 3y ago
  There has been quite a lot of reporting on the origins of the iPhone since then, and from that work it is clear that they really did not intend to allow native apps on the phone. They had to reassign resources to make it happen in a hurry once they changed their mind, which resulted in shrinking and delaying that year’s OS X release.
• miffy900 3y ago
  That wasn't the main reason though - UIKit v1.0 was pretty barebones not because they needed more time, but Jobs vetoed work on it for so long because he genuinely thought native apps were a bad idea.
  • tjmc 3y ago
    This is correct and has been forgotten. "You don’t want your phone to be an open platform. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up." -Steve Jobs 2007
• kalleboo 3y ago
  Apple internal emails from the period have been released as court evidence. They didn't make the decision to create a native SDK until 4 months after the iPhone was released (by this time there was already jailbreak sideloading available) https://nitter.net/techemails/status/1400270458608664577 https://nitter.net/techemails/status/1400270458608664577 In another email it seems like before the device was released the need for a native SDK was considered only as a stopgap until HSDPA was fast enough to make web apps good enough (the original iPhone was EDGE only) https://www.techemails.com/p/scott-forstall-emails-steve-jobs https://www.techemails.com/p/scott-forstall-emails-steve-job...