What Steve Jobs originally thought about 3rd party apps on the iPhone

[Rogifan]

My how times have changed.

https://www.macrumors.com/2007/01/11/apple-iphone-apps-coming-but-limited/

We define everything that is on the phone. You dont want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesnt work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.

 

[sixrom]

Just another opinion from one of the world's greatest narcissists.

 

[numlock]

have there ever been any stories that not everyone at apple agreed with this view at the time?

 

[Rogifan]

have there ever been any stories that not everyone at apple agreed with this view at the time?

I remember reading how Steve was in the minority (like when he was against porting iTunes to Windows). Kind of amusing how just a couple years later we had this:

 

[numlock]

I remember reading how Steve was in the minority (like when he was against porting iTunes to Windows). Kind of amusing how just a couple years later we had this:

Image

its kinda political and ot but i find it rather self serving and ironic to see those slides with "we paid #$" or "we created # jobs" etc when in fact its an ecosystem which by nature needs input from more than one. and as someone who lived through the dark ages of having just web apps and having to jailbreak (towers of hanoi) that the devs and customers played a huge part to get the ios ecosystem where it is now.

where would the iphone and ipod (would the ipad even exist)? be today if everyone had been content with calculator and notes and web apps?

 

[The Doctor11]

Wow just wow

 

[east85]

Blast from the past. No 3rd party applications would have really killed it, but if you look at the rest of the article he does kind of ration that if he were to do it they would be released in a controlled environment. This shows that he wasn't completely closed off to the idea, and it's actually what ended up happening.

 

[BenTrovato]

It's technology... what you say today you may have to reverse tomorrow.

 

[Renzatic]

Wow. Macrumors was a much saner place before the iPhone came out. It's weird seeing actual, honest critical discussion on the first two pages of an article.

 

[Jessica Lares]

I remember buying a jailbreak app to take video on my iPhone 2G. I think it was like $10 at the time.

I was using a Pocket PC running Windows Mobile that I got years before the iPhone was introduced, and wanted either one of those, or a Palm Treo for my first phone. I just think he didn't the iPhone to be another one of those, or the Newton.

The app store isn't what it is today because of just the developers, it's because Apple themselves always pushed everyone to be consistent in their work, forced their APIs, and have lots and lots of documentation. And if you want your work to be in a commercial, banners, etc, this is how you HAVE to do it their way or get left behind. Both by Apple and all the people using iOS.

The web apps really helped to figure out what was wanted, what wasn't, and what didn't work. And the jailbreak community at the time really helped too, with apps like Brushes and Tap Tap Revenge being released through Installer at the time.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

It was a poorly written summary, Jobs wasn't ruling out 3rd party apps in the slightest. In fact the same source article went on to say:

“These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.”

Sound familiar?

 

[impulse462]

I get what he's saying. By mentioning "PC" he probably mean't getting apps from anywhere on the web would probably bad for user experience. That is still true today. They just found a way to approve each app that's accepted since they eventually had to use 3rd party apps.

 

[kdarling]

have there ever been any stories that not everyone at apple agreed with this view at the time?

Yes. It's talked about in his authorized biography by Isaacson...

Jobs was initially unconvinced that apps would benefit Apple or its iOS platform.

"When it first came out in early 2007, there were no apps you could buy from outside developers, and Jobs initially resisted allowing them," writes Isaacson. "He didn't want outsiders to create applications for the iPhone that could mess it up, infect it with viruses, or pollute its integrity."

Hence no external apps for the first iPhone. However, the book explains that behind the scenes, Apple board member Art Levinson and SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller were pressing Jobs to change his mind.

"I called him a half dozen times to lobby for the potential of the apps," says Levinson, while Schiller adds that "I couldn't imagine that we would create something as powerful as the iPhone and not empower developers to make lots of apps. I knew customers would love them."

The Guardian review Oct 2011

Jobs also publicly worried that apps could bring down networks:

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs.

“You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

-- Newsweek (1/11/2007)

Which turned out to be a bit ironic, as it was instead Apple's own software stack that often had bugs causing problems for AT&T's network.

E.g. the infamous WCDMA runaway power bug when the iPhone first got 3G, which ramped up iPhone power output until it caused cell users further away to drop their calls. Ooops. Decent testing should've caught that.

 

[gnasher729]

My how times have changed.

https://www.macrumors.com/2007/01/11/apple-iphone-apps-coming-but-limited/

That's not what Steve Jobs originally thought. That's what Steve Jobs, marketing genius, said based on the fact that Apple at that time didn't have development tools that were ready to be given to the public.

 

[Rogifan]

Yes. It's talked about in his authorized biography by Isaacson...



Jobs also publicly worried that apps could bring down networks:



Which turned out to be a bit ironic, as it was instead Apple's own software stack that often had bugs causing problems for AT&T's network.

E.g. the infamous WCDMA runaway power bug when the iPhone first got 3G, which ramped up iPhone power output until it caused cell users further away to drop their calls. Ooops. Decent testing should've caught that.

If only you worked at Apple so you could make sure these things were caught.

----------

That's not what Steve Jobs originally thought. That's what Steve Jobs, marketing genius, said based on the fact that Apple at that time didn't have development tools that were ready to be given to the public.

Walter Isaacson's book says differently.

 

[kdarling]

If only you worked at Apple so you could make sure these things were caught.

Ha. Not me

But I bet that strict test lab at Verizon would've caught it. (They secretly tested the CDMA iPhone for six months before it was announced.)

No idea how AT&T missed it. Power control runaway is like one of the first tests they should've run with CDMA type radios. Maybe it was a secrecy thing, like with the first model, where AT&T only got to test it inside of desktop boxes.

That's not what Steve Jobs originally thought. That's what Steve Jobs, marketing genius, said based on the fact that Apple at that time didn't have development tools that were ready to be given to the public.

According to the biography, it had nothing to do with an SDK being ready or not. He was simply worried about apps messing up his nice phone.

When he was finally talked into it, it was because he decided a curated app store would solve his worries.

That was another irony. He had made fun of carriers and their walled garden app stores for feature phones ... and then turned around and built his own walled garden, using the same excuse carriers had used for keeping control (and revenue).

If Microsoft had tried something like that a few years before with Windows Mobile, accusations of monopolistic and greedy behavior would've probably been heard around the world.

 

[carjakester]

On my phones before the iphone i never got any apps, i just used what was on it. Clearly times have changed and third party apps are a necessity.

 

[roadbloc]

He wanted web-apps to kick off didn't he? I guess when that never happened he had no choice to release a few APIs and a Store. Shame really, web-apps would have made for a much more open and pleasant smartphone industry.