[RubberShoes]

What's funny is how much friction and persuasion it took to get them to actually do the App Store. Steve was hellbent on WebApps and I hope the history books recognize how much influence jailbreakers had in shifting the discussion to native apps

https://youtu.be/8Vq993Td6ys?t=32

[wmab]

That's super interesting, thanks for the video! Perhaps they understood that there might be resistance to native ("small market" at the start) and so looked for something that could help the transition?

[Someone]

More likely, they knew the hardware couldn’t really run much more.

The first iPhone had 128MB of RAM and ran at 412 MHz, underclocked from 620 MHz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation) ), and there was disbelief that what they showed could be built at all at the time with the advertised battery life.

They likely also didn’t want to commit yet to an API for third-party apps, as they didn’t know what was reasonable there.

[whynaut]

I was under the impression Steve was (rather unhappily) forced into this position because of the state of native apps by launch. Can't remember where I read this or I'd gladly link it.

[oblio]

I agree with you, I'd be amazed if Steve "Control Freak" Jobs would have wanted an open app ecosystem.