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Safari: iPhone Development Platform

PCWorldCited 3× on HN, 2020–2024
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news · general · 2020–2024 on HN

A short PCWorld news clip from WWDC 2007 in which Steve Jobs announces Safari as the development platform for iPhone apps. Developers could build web apps with access to calling, maps and email.

HN cites it as evidence that Jobs originally intended web apps to be the iPhone's app model.

3 comments from Hacker News

@midasuni2024-02 · in “It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU”

> Apple just made their true target crystal clear: they have always been aiming at web capabilities: Not what Jobs said ▶ this video Originally there wasn’t an SDK at all.

@chx2022-10 · in “Stadia died because no one trusts Google”

Jobs initially wanted people to build web apps ▶ this video and the app store only became available for the second generation iPhone (which was called the iPhone 3G). The next year, the 3GS added HSDPA support which made online browsing pretty smooth. Combined with apps, it was finally ready for massive success.

@RubberShoes2020-08 · in “Apple becomes first U.S. company to reach a $2T market cap”

What's funny is how much friction and persuasion it took to get them to actually do the App Store. Steve was hellbent on WebApps and I hope the history books recognize how much influence jailbreakers had in shifting the discussion to native apps ▶ this video