I'm referring primarily to the hardware side of this from a roadmap perspective.

I don't think early politics about how apps get shipped plays too much into the core planning for the device, e.g. form factor, manufacturing, user interactions, structure of built-in apps, etc. are all pretty much orthogonal to the app distribution model.

But even then, there were clearly two camps, which means there was a disagreement about a specific path, but not a lack of forward thinking. And then they course corrected. Something that many companies simply do not do.

Yeah absolutely. I just don’t think that consumer tech companies which make 10 year plans (instead of a broad high level vision) and try to stick to them tend to be that successful.

> are all pretty much orthogonal to the app distribution model.

I’m not sure it’s only the distribution but the entire existence of native third party apps that they weren’t sure about.

I was including 1st party vs. 3rd party in my mind when I mentioned distribution. Admittedly that word is doing some heavy lifting.

I'm pretty sure the whole web app thing was just a smoke screen (aka lie) because the app store wasn't ready yet.

> I highly doubt that considering that web app / native app store debacle.

You mean the same Apple where jobs said that no one would want to watch video on a tiny screen less than two years before the video iPod?

Apple didn’t go from idea of a fully featured SDK and an App Store in nine months without already planning to do so.

IMO it's only a debacle for developers who don't want to learn the native platform or don't think they can do it.