Item — HN Reader

The App Store didn't exist for the first iPhone. It launched with the iPhone 3G. The original plan was for everyone to develop web apps; the SDK was added due to external developer demand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(Apple)#History

Not denying how important it was, but the App Store wasn't "invented". It was created because Apple listened to what developers wanted.

1 comments

I don't think developers wanted App Store, they wanted to build native apps. Has Apple just allowed them to ship their own .dmg files from their website, as they used to do in MacOS, they would be happy.

I can't tell for sure, but I would bet the app store concept was inspired from Cydia for jailbroken iPhones that used APT to download apps from a central software repository, which was already common in the Linux world at the time.

App Store as a central place to download apps was a really important concept for the iPhone ecosystem because it was a distribution and a marketing channel. Developers didn't asked for that and, for the better and the worst, we can give Apple some credit for building it that way.

I suppose the tricky thing is knowing when to listen to others and when you know more than everyone else.