This iPhone analogy is full of crap. Apple delivered the fisrt iPhone with the software it needed to be, in itself, very usefull! The app developers came after, when a user base had already been created.
For example, it sported a capacitive touchscreen (touchscreens were mostly resistive back in 2007), it featured multitouch (you need a capacitive touchscreen for that), yet it didn't have 3G (it had EDGE), lacked copy/paste, lacked a repository ("app store"), lacked applications, and required a contract.
Add to that that Apple already existed, had a solid fanbase, and already released their first product for mass market (iPod), and well... Steve Jobs reality distortion field. Who knows what would've happened if Apple was a very new company with no such fanbase, history, or CEO.