Remembering the iPhone rollout
It wasn't a happy moment for developers. The iPhone was closed to development, Apple was blowing smoke about it. And the press was eating it up.
by Dave Winer Monday, January 9, 2017

Just reviewed my blog archive from January 2007 re Apple's iPhone announcement.

Ten years ago. Back then we weren't told very much about the iPhone, but we knew it wouldn't run any of the software we were making, in fact Apple made a big deal how it wouldn't run any software at all.

Whether this was smoke, or did Jobs really want to make a completely closed box is still not clear to this day. Apple would eventually relent, and we got apps, still very controlled things. The iPhone has never been a very open platform. 

There were patent issues floating around Apple in January 2007, they were playing hardball with bloggers and Cisco. I have a vague memory of being pissed that Apple was charting a course completely independently of software developers. We kind of did see it coming, but this was the moment when we finally got the bad news, officially. 

It was not a good day, judging from my memories of it.