Not everybody hates skeumorphism, especially when not taken to an extreme (okay, Apple under Jobs often did take it to an extreme... like the leather Calendar app). But skeumorphism, when used properly, provides affordances and hints to the user.

> told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough

That's because the SDK wasn't ready for developers yet. You must remember that, first and foremost, Jobs was a great salesman. If you don't yet sell it, it's a piece of crap and unnecessary, right? And when you _do_ sell it, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

No, they weren't going to do a public SDK, until after the huge sustained public outcry.

I understand the plan was to work with select third parties on a case by case basis, sort of akin to standalone game consoles.

I hear that repeated a lot, but I haven't seen any real evidence to back it up.

It seems equally plausible, especially given how quickly they announced the SDK after the iPhone release, that Apple was preparing for it but not ready yet (and/or wanted to give themselves time to work out the early kinks in all of the other parts: working with AT&T, supporting the new device and new OS, etc, etc).

It was reported in the Isaacson biography:

"Apple board member Art Levinson told Isaacson that he phoned Jobs “half a dozen times to lobby for the potential of the apps,” but, according to Isaacson, “Jobs at first quashed the discussion, partly because he felt his team did not have the bandwidth to figure out all the complexities that would be involved in policing third-party app developers.”

Apple had already established a model for selling third party software on the iPod video line through iTunes -- with select partners only.

When WWDC 2007 rolled around, after the release of the iPhone, Jobs presented web apps as the solution for developers, without the need for an SDK. It was only after months of sustained outcry from the development community, and the nascent jailbreaking scene, that Jobs announced that they would prepare a public SDK for the next year, after they decided on a method of signing and sandboxing applications.

None of which contradicts my thesis: that it wasn't rejected, but that Apple wasn't ready at the time of release to undertake the task of opening it to all comers.

The supposition that it was only due to the outcry of the development community is exactly that, a supposition.

According to an Apple board member it was rejected internally by Jobs himself.

Yeah the UI assets had to be there in the first place. Compared to SBSettings, the jailbreak era control center, which looked like someone taped together the buttons, and it becomes apparent that Job's statement was just salesmanship.

Oh really. That, I wasn't aware of. Well, at least they saw the cash cow that the App Store could become at some point, and acted. It's good to change your mind when new information comes to light.

I suspect people rooting and writing their own apps pushed them as well. If they didn't control the 3rd party apps, other people would.

I'm rather firmly convinced that the "they don't need native apps" was Jobs merely stalling til the SDK was stable enough to release to the public.

"The one who, at the first iPhone release, told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough, right?"

Nowadays we have plenty of people complaining that they have to have "apps" for everything when they have a perfectly good web browser on their phone, so he wasn't that far off.