Yes it was, they later changed their stance. In the announcement for iPhone, Jobs on stage explicitly stated that all you need to develop an app was html and modern javascript with API's into the phone hardware. And they would basically just be a PWA that would keep the app updated automatically as soon as the developer makes a change, all while keeping the iPhone "reliable and secure." In fact, he was bragging about not having a store "rather than having to go through this complex update process" as a dig at the Google play store.