>And I don’t believe Jobs EVER thought that, that was his spin
If you read his biography he had to be convinced to have users create their own apps and install them on the iPhone. He vehemently shot down the idea before he had to be convinced of the idea by Bill Campbell (the coach) when Steve was vacationing in Hawaii.
Read the book and you’ll understand more of the backstory
Oh, I understand he wanted to keep it sacred so the ‘commoners’ couldn’t sully it with their lack of taste (see: fart apps).
But it was immediately clear that everyone wanted to program for it. And once they decided to go down that path my impression from articles and interviews is that webapps were something of a stopgap until they could get native code ready to release.
And I don’t believe Jobs EVER thought that, that was his spin. Everything that has come out since seems to indicate that he knew web apps sucked but that was what they could get out the door fast. The internal APIs didn’t seem to be in a releasable state.
Normal people have never used APT.
I remember how you got software for Palm or WinCE. It was a pain, you had to search the web or buy it boxed. You better not lose that memory card or download file. And since you bought it from tons of places you always had to put your card in.
What I’m talking about is the simplicity end users had never seen on any device (to my knowledge). The store already had your card, just type in your password. It knew what you bought, you could redownload it for free. No sketchy websites. And one central place to search.
That was miles ahead of any other way of buying software.