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by EdSharkey 1019 days ago
Jobs was ahead of his time, and he pushed the vision of HTML5 and offline apps. He was resistant to app stores, I suspect, because he wanted maximum freedom for users in the future rather than the corporatized, schlock-filled, freedom restricting, walled garden the post-Jobs Apple brought.

You see his vision as a big miss. I see his vision as evidence of good taste and also an eventuality.
1 comments
ajross 1019 days ago
Jobs clearly wasn't resistant to app stores. He literally had one in the works when the product shipped. It just wasn't ready, so he spun a yarn about web apps (and yes: he was ahead of his time, and these days you can totally do that, but now that Apple owns that 30% fee, they're decidedly anti web apps).
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JimDabell 1019 days ago
> Jobs clearly wasn't resistant to app stores. He literally had one in the works when the product shipped.

This is a myth. Jobs was genuinely against a native SDK and made the final decision to go for it on the 2nd of October 2007. Then Apple had to rush out the first version of the iPhoneOS SDK in just over three months. This is documented in contemporaneous emails produced during discovery for the Epic trial.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/04/this-one-email-explains-ap...

> now that Apple owns that 30% fee

It’s been 15% for years. The only people who pay 30% are people who earn more than a million dollars a year through the App Store. Almost everybody pays 15%.

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ajross 1019 days ago
> It’s been 15% for years. The only people who pay 30% are people who earn more than a million dollars a year through the App Store. Almost everybody pays 15%.

Right. And by the same logic Amazon makes exactly zero revenue from AWS, which is completely free for "almost everybody". You knew what I meant.

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EdSharkey 1019 days ago
HN discussion quality check:

Jobs clearly wasn't resistant to app stores.

> Wrong, here's receipts.

30%!

> Wrong, 15% unless you're a whale.

Don't argue. Just read my mind through the screen, you already agree with everything I said.

----

I don't get a dopamine hit from threads like this, they drain me. The opposing side gets a dopamine hit, reputation be damned.

I wish everyone would broaden their media sources as well as treasure history more (myself included.) I do appreciate flippant vs. philosophical exchanges like these to sift the comments for nuanced truths.

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