PWAs (progressive web apps) surely existed before React though

IIRC, the cutting edge of PWAs when the app store was taking off was Backbone.js, which I don't recall being pleasant enough to work with to want to make anything large in.

I worked on converting an existing knockoutjs SPA into a PWA around that time. I won't claim it was a pleasant experience but it was probably a lot easier and quicker than a small team of webdevs learning mobile dev and cheaper than a new hire. It wasn't a small or basic app, but we did have the advantage of it being a B2B tool that would only be used on android tablets. IIRC it was going to be either extra work or maybe even impossible to get the same functionality on iOS/safari at the time so we just didn't.

React was open sourced in 2013. Service workers, which I consider to be essential to what we understand as PWAs, shipped first in Chrome in 2015, Safari in 2018.

Sure. But Jobs was talking about running 'web apps' on iPhone OS as a software distribution channel, pre App Store, 2007-2008.

I completely understand the confusion, but "Progressive Web App" or PWA[1], coined by Alex Russell and Frances Berriman[2], has become a specific term for websites that work normally on a pc but can also take advantage of things like push notifications and be installed on the home screen of a phone. You can see a measurable uptick on Google Trends after this blogpost [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app

[2] https://infrequently.org/2015/06/progressive-apps-escaping-t...

[3] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fg%2F11bzxympx6...

If anyone wishes to remember what that looked like.

https://web.archive.org/web/20071012231544/http://www.apple....

https://web.archive.org/web/20071012025941/http://www.apple....