Keep in mind that the 1st-gen iPhone only supported a small set of built-in apps. Third-party apps didn't appear until 2008.

<https://www.macstories.net/stories/10-years-of-app-store-a-t...>

HN discussion at the time:

- Apple iPhone SDK Event: iFund - $100 Million for iPhone Devs <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=130686>

And some early skepticism: "iPhone SDK And Restrictions: Some Of The Details Aren’t Great" (7 Mar 2008) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131171> Mostly concerns limitations on the API and what capabilities are exposed.

And for those who care to do more digging, a couple of searches bounded on 5 Mar 2008 -- 6 Mar 2012, the first 4 years of the App store:

"iphone sdk": <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1331078400&dateRange=custom&...>

"iphone apps": <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1331078400&dateRange=custom&...>

"iOS apps": <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1331078400&dateRange=custom&...>

A very cursory eyeball of those shows some interest, but nothing overwhelmingly panglossian or critical. But I've not looked in depth.