It was added to the original iPhone with iPhone OS 2.
I think what they meant could be rephrased as, "for as long as there's been an App Store, it's been part of the OS. "
Which I believe is also false. The jailbroken appstores predate the apple appstore.
What does thad mean "part of the OS"? It is not built into the kernel, and is therefore no part of the OS. I do not see why the same would not apply to Apple.
But maybe the US legal system is just totally broken ...
There's plenty of parts of an OS that aren't the kernel.
You are playing semantics - "He is not a slave, he is an endantured servant, nothing wrong here"
I'm rephrasing another person's statement to clarify what (I believe) they meant.
Separately, that's kind of a gross choice of comparisons.