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Steve Jobs' original vision for iOS web apps, WWDC 2007

Bruce Lawson · 4.8K views · 2021-09-15 · 2:18

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Overview

A two-minute clip of Steve Jobs at WWDC 2007 introducing the plan for iPhone third-party apps as web apps built on Safari and Ajax. It shows the original vision before the native SDK and App Store.

On Hacker News

HN cites it in platform-power and PWA debates as proof that Apple originally wanted the future of apps to be on the web.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2022–2026

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What people said

boomskats · 2026-03 · Reference

> Was it? Yes. Here's a quote for you from the original WWDC 2007 iPhone launch[0]: _"We've come up with a very sweet solution. An innovative new way to create applications... it’s all based on the fact that we have the full Safari engine in the iPhone. And so you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone! And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need!"_ > I think one of IOSs strength is its operating system one of the OS' strengths is its OS, cool > and proper native apps not what we're talking about here at all > PWAs are inaccessible, bloated, slow and awkward to use. literally the opposite of all those things [0]: [VIDEO]

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koito17 · 2023-09 · Reference

> Apple has never been big on the web. That may be true today, but I don't think it was true during the early days of the iPhone, where Steve Jobs wanted no third-party native code running on the iPhone, only web apps that connect to third-party services.[1][2] It wasn't until lots of developer backlash and subsequent success of the App Store that they decided to de-prioritize the web. [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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bluk · 2023-01 · Reference

Amongst others, probably referring to: [VIDEO] and [LINK] Whether it's revisionist history or not, there were later claims that Steve Jobs knew they couldn't have a native platform ready when the iPhone was first announced so they stalled for time to a) get the App Store ready and b) see what types of app ideas were popular to get those platform APIs finalized. The interim solution was web apps with recommendations to look at the Dashboard APIs in Mac OS X (which were basically web apps).

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Sources

Video by Bruce Lawson, played through YouTube.

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