(electronic chiming)
- Hi, sorry to keep you waiting,
but Steve Jobs has just
one last thing to announce.
- The iPhone ships on June 29th.
- I can't wait, but
can I make apps for it?
- What about developers?
- Yes. Yes, Steve, what about us?
Come on, tell me!
- We have been trying to
come up with a solution.
- Yes?
- And guess what?
There's no SDK that you need.
(duck quacking)
- Yo, Steve, what the hell man?
Hey guys, how you all doing?
Really? That's just great.
You know, I'm doing
pretty great today too.
You know, the iOS App Store
turned 12 years old recently,
and while it's a booming platform,
not everybody is happy about it.
In fact, the July, 2020 Antitrust Hearings
kind of inspired me to
look back on the history
of the App Store.
And I started thinking the
App Store has had such a huge
impact on a culture, not just on tech,
but just everyone's lives in general.
So what would the world be like
if the App Store never existed?
Because there was a time where Steve Jobs
was against the idea of
users installing third-party
native applications on their iPhone.
So that's what we're
going to talk about today.
At Macworld 2007, Steve Jobs went on stage
and blew the audience's minds away
with the first iPhone introduction.
The software was the big game changer.
At WWDC 2007, after
showing off the upcoming
major release of Mac OS10, Leopard,
Steve jobs and announces one last thing.
And that's the development
platform for the iPhone,
but here's the kicker. No SDK required.
How are you supposed to write
software for a new platform
without a software development kit?
Well, Apple's vision was
developers would write
web applications, just using
standard web technologies,
and those apps would just run inside
of the Safari web browser.
By the way, the irony of this
whole thing gets really juicy.
So stick with me,
but ultimately people were
shocked by this announcement.
I actually spoke to someone who attended
the keynote address.
He said, LOL. Yeah, it was shocking.
The silence was palpable .
My business partner at the time
and I just looked at each other
and were totally shell shocked
as part of the reason we
showed up was for the SDK info.
It was almost like a
member of the family died
when he announced it.
So I think it was fair to say
that people were disappointed
by this announcement and
sure you could still write
those web apps using Web
2.0 technologies, AJAX,
and those apps could tap into
certain features on the phone,
like the maps application.
So that's okay I guess,
but it was still kind of limiting.
Here's where things get
a little interesting.
In late 2011, a little while
after Steve Jobs passed away,
this book was about to go on sale.
It's Walter Isaacson's
biography of Steve Jobs.
It's a thickie, it's a
good one. It's a good read.
But one of the cool stories
in it is about how Steve
was opposed to the idea
of third party native apps
on the iPhone.
So why? Why did Apple
want to go this route?
The main reason Jobs wanted to
keep native third party apps
off the phone was because
he wanted to keep the iPhone
safe and reliable.
He wanted to protect
the iPhone from viruses,
malware, and privacy attacks.
If Apple opened the flood gates,
they would need to
regulate it all somehow,
IE with an app store,
but according to Isaacson's biography,
quote, Jobs at first
quashed the discussion,
partly because he felt his
team did not have the bandwidth
to figure out all of the complexities
that would be involved in policing
third party app developers. Makes sense.
The iPhone was projected to
be a really big platform.
There's going to be a lot
of attention coming to it.
And if you don't have
any kind of regulation
and people just throw out a bunch of apps
you can install all of a sudden, well,
the world is full of people
that will take advantage of that.
Users would just unknowingly
install a bunch of crap
that could invade their
privacy or infect their data.
It could be pretty nasty
if it wasn't a regulated.
In an open letter,
Steve backed up this thought
saying that the iPhone
would be a highly visible target,
so it makes sense that Apple
needs to keep it secure.
So everything would run
in the Safari engine,
which is sandboxed and
nothing inside that sandbox
could ever leak out and affect other parts
of the iPhone software.
That was it. Those were the web apps.
They kind of worked, but they weren't
the most convenient thing.
I mean, you would still
have to go to Safari
every time you wanted
to load something up.
You would have that
navigation bar up there
most of the time, if not all the time,
which I think kind of
ruins the user experience
just a little bit.
It wasn't perfect by any means,
but it was better than nothing.
The web app experience
was improved a little bit
when Jobs introduced Web
Clips at Macworld 2008.
This feature let users add these web apps
to their home screen, and this
was also the first version
of iOS, not called iOS at the time,
which allowed home screen customization.
So there you go. Those are web apps.
That was the vision for the iPhone.
At the time, this was
likely a stop gap solution.
Remember that open letter I
was talking about earlier?
It also said, let me just say it.
We want native third party
applications on the iPhone.
And we planned to have an SDK
in developers hands in February.
Was Apple secretly working
on one this whole time?
Possibly. Isaacson's book goes
on to say that Steve Jobs,
even though he was
initially against the idea
of native third party applications,
he said that Steve was
more open to the idea
every time the conversation came up.
So it looked like third-party native apps
were going to be the future of the iPhone
on one big condition.
The apps had to be regulated.
By the way, this book dives
way more into the story.
Plus it dives into a bunch of other things
in Steve Jobs' personal life
and in Apple's company history.
So I highly recommend giving it a read.
I put some links down in the description.
Go ahead and get yourself a copy.
So what next?
In March, Apple demoed the SDK
and released it to developers.
This meant developers didn't
need to make web apps anymore.
And users didn't need to
run those apps in Safari.
Devs could build native applications
for the iPhone software, AKA iPhone OS,
which was later named iOS.
Some of the first demos
included communication apps,
medical apps, and games.
Everything was looking really promising.
But the big question was how
do the apps get to the user?
And that's what brings us to
what we're talking about today.
One hour, three minutes and 52 seconds
into the March 6th event,
Steve Jobs introduced the App Store.
The App Store was an ideal
middle ground solution.
It offered third party
native apps to customers,
but the iPhone could still stay protected
and secure because the
App Store helped regulate
the quality control and the
security of the software.
- Porn.
- But not only that, the App
Store was also the fastest way
for all of those developers
to reach the millions
of iPhone and iPod Touch users,
and you could even potentially
get funding with iFund.
With all of those factors
combined together,
there was nothing else like it.
It was the quickest
solution to get your apps
to many users super quickly.
At WWDC, 2008, Apple
hosted training sessions
to help developers get their apps ready
for the App Store launch.
And on July 10th, 2008, the
App Store officially went live
with over 500 apps.
In 2010, the App Store
launched on the iPad.
In 2011, the App Store
launched on the Mac,
expanding its reach.
And in June, by June, 2011,
Apple had already paid out
$2.5 billion to developers who
sold and released their
apps on the App Store.
It exploded. The app
store really took off.
I know it's not perfect.
No platform is perfect.
I can't wave a magic wand
and fix all the problems.
It's not my area of expertise.
So I'm not going to pretend
to know what the solution is
to making everything
perfect with the App Store.
But on the positive side,
the App Store has changed the world.
How different would your
life and the world be
without those convenient apps
just easily accessible and
right there in your pocket?
One other thing I want to
talk about really quick,
and this is the irony that
I was hinting at earlier.
In 2007, 2008, we were using
desktop native applications
on our computers, right?
And we were using web apps on the iPhone,
but then as time went
on, it's like we shifted.
We're not using web apps
on the phone anymore.
We're using native apps on the
phone and on the computers,
we're using less native
apps and more web based apps
and web based apps that
are software as a service.
And even if you do install
some native applications
on your computer, like Slack or Discord,
those apps are really
just glorified web views,
which, hey, it still works.
No problem with that.
I just find it amusing.
And the next shift going
forward is hybridization.
With the Apple ecosystem,
you can already use Catalyst
to modify an iOS application
to run it on the Mac,
And with Apple Silicon Max,
you can just run iOS
applications natively on your Mac
without any modification.
Heck, even Microsoft
is working with Samsung
to make Android apps, play more nicely
and just integrate
directly into Windows 10.
And Microsoft has also
had the windows subsystem
for Linux for a while where he could run
Linux based programs on Windows.
As time goes on, these platforms
are becoming less siloed
and they're turning into
melting pots, really.
So it's going to be interesting
to see where that goes.
And again, I highly
encourage you to read up
on Steve's history and Apple's history.
This is a great read.
I have links in the
description for physical copies
and ebook copies. So go
ahead and grab yourself one.
(notification alert)
Oh, hey, there's a link up there too.
How convenient.
So there you go. A brief
history of the App Store.
Now I know iFund isn't
just going to swoop in
and give us a a hundred million
dollars of venture capital.
So if you want to help
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And if you liked this
episode, you know what to do.
Thanks for sticking with me.
Catch the crazy, pass it on.
(upbeat electronic music)
(electronic chiming)
