Hacker News Reader

Given how quickly the App Store was introduced (just one year later) I’m betting that they never had the intention to go web-app only. They probably only needed extra time to figure out the experience for both developers and users (from native APIs to permission model to monetization)

View on HN

Actually, incorrect. According to court documents released from lawsuits, Apple in fact did not plan for the App Store initially, just like Steve Jobs said on stage. It was not until a few months after the iPhone was released that some internal employees convinced Steve to let it go ahead and release an SDK. I can't find the tweet containing a copy of it, but the actual email where Steve gave the SDK a go is on the public record.

https://www.macstories.net/linked/apple-captured-in-a-single...

And what Steve said at the time remain true to this day, there will be two type of Apps, those that get on the App Store with Native performance, and HTML5 Apps without the need of Apple Approval. That was actually asked in an interview in D8 about the power of App Store, before smartphone was ubiquitous. And yet somehow no one at Apple knew what to do after his death.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com