[pyre]

That's what he said in public, but there was a lot of suspicion that an SDK just wasn't ready for the iPhone launch, but was planned all along. Jobs never would have gone on stage and talked about how an SDK was ~ a year down the road, during the launch of a brand new product. It would have detracted from the, "look at this brand new shiny thing that we've built," buzz.

[snowwrestler]

Every piece of reporting I've read, including books like Isaacson's bio and Lashinsky's Inside Apple, shows that the initial plan was to not have an SDK for the iPhone, because of fears about security and terrible apps "ruining" the experience.

It was only after it launched that Jobs reversed himself and Apple came up with the idea of the App Store process to manage those fears.