Mobile web apps that can be installed on device were invented by Apple.
This was the way developers were supposed to develop apps for the iPhone when it was released, before Apple introduced the App Store.
This was the way developers were supposed to develop apps for the iPhone when it was released, before Apple introduced the App Store.
Jobs framed it that way, but IIRC, all you could do is create bookmarks. Creating an icon on the Home Screen? Impossible. Reliably storing data on-device? Impossible. Backing up your on-device data? Impossible. Accessing your on-device contacts, photos? Impossible.
Also, Jobs made a vision statement about web apps in June 2007, but Apple announced a SDK only four months later (in October 2007) and shipped it in March 2008.
⇒ I’m fairly sure he knew about that SDK when he made that statement.
Apple invented installable mobile web apps.
Link about the needed metatag: https://www.mobilejoomla.com/forum/4-feature-requests/330-ip...
Steve Jobs introducing web apps as the way to develop apps for the iPhone in 2007: https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...
I'm not 100% sure no other mobile OS allowed this before to be honest, but I'm pretty iOS is the one that popularized it.
Also that was precisely the idea behind Windows 9x Active Desktop apps.
Symbian I just never had an Phone expensive enough to use like that.
In the end none of them really worked out I guess.