Steve Jobs' original vision for iOS web apps, WWDC 2007
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it in platform-power and PWA debates as proof that Apple originally wanted the future of apps to be on the web.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2022 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites smoldesu · 2022-06 · on “Facebook says Apple is too powerful – they're right”
> By all means, force Apple to open things up, but in the same stroke ensure that there's no uneven enforcement that could allow other corporate giants to expand their monopolies where they previously couldn't. Well-met, I agree wholeheartedly. Mirosoft, Google and Amazon all deserve to abide by the same rule-of-law. > There's a lot of support for breaking Apple's iron grip on software distribution on iOS for example, but practically none for breaking Google's iron grip on the web Well... yeah. If I want to publish a website today, I can buy a VPS and a domain name and have it broadcasting my personal believes by the end of the day. Pretty much everything on the web is working as it should,
Cites cronix · 2022-09 · on “Learn PWA”
Kind of close. Here was the relevant portion of the actual iPhone announcement by Steve Jobs saying all you needed to write great native apps for iPhone was ajax and web 2.0. There was no mention of "app store" in the speech: [this video]
Cites bluk · 2023-01 · on “Why Google and Apple act the way they do, working to snuff out the mobile web”
Amongst others, probably referring to: [this 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).
Cites koito17 · 2023-09 · on “EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals”
> 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] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Cites boomskats · 2026-03 · on “Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari continues”
> 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]: [this video]