It's worth noting what Steve Jobs said at the introduction of the iPhone: "The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 an

It's worth noting what Steve Jobs said at the introduction of the iPhone: "The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps. And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need if you know how to write apps using the most modern web standards to write amazing apps for the iPhone today. So developers, we think we’ve got a very sweet story for you. You can begin building your iPhone apps today." There was no SDK initially. Webapps were the _only_ way to put your app on the iPhone. My understanding is that developers demanded an SDK, though. It seems that part of the reason for not wanting native Apps is because Jobs felt that policing an app store would be too difficult. As to whether the current browser is purposely crippled for the sake of directing people to native apps, I think that might be a bit difficult to prove. Is it perhaps instead that native apps naturally provide better performance, developers demanded it, and so Apple focuses its resources there? Shrug. Some more detail here: http://www.cultofmac.com/125180/steve-jobs-was-originally-dead-set-against-third-party-apps-for-the-iphone/ http://www.cultofmac.com/125180/steve-jobs-was-originally-de...