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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

As much as I'd like to think Apple will officially announce PastryKit at some preview event Q1 2010, it just doesn't seem very Apple-like to do anything at this point that could dilute the ongoing popular attention to the App Store.

Actually, maybe that's it: Perhaps PastryKit was developed originally as a "plan B" in case the App Store didn't take off. Its development probably tracks back to before 2007, when third-party native development was still in question, and was kept in the back pocket as the App Store was launched.

My guess is it will stay a stealth project unless the voice of devs burned by App Store policies becomes too loud and Apple needs to bring out an alternative.

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    Perhaps PastryKit was developed originally as a "plan B" in case the
    App Store didn't take off. Its development probably tracks back
    to before 2007, when third-party native development was still in
    question, and was kept in the back pocket as the App Store
    was launched.

Actually, given the history of 3rd party development on the device, I think this was "Plan A" and the App Store was "Plan B." When you watch the first couple of Stevenotes that came during and after the iPhone's public announcement, you'll note that Apple was originally expecting developers to only make web apps. But there was a big push-back from developers complaining that they couldn't make apps good enough to stand side-by-side with the built-in ones. (And people also pointed out the pointlessness of advertising to devs that the iPhone was using the same technologies as OS X if they couldn't be directly accessed.)

Apple employs a big pile of talented individuals, but I highly doubt they went from developer pushback in Summer 07 to the SDK in Spring 08 (when the SDK started hitting Apple's partners). Particularly considering the huge changes to the API calls between iPhone's OS 1 and 2.

It looks to me much more like the SDK was dependent on an OS build that just wasn't ready for primetime in 2007 and Steve was just trying to spin what they had as something you want.

PastryKit is a red herring. If Apple decides that it wants to fully support webapps as rivals to native apps then PastryKit is just a nicety. What real commitment from Apple would give you is bug-fixes and improvements to Webkit.

Why re-invent something in Javascript when you control the underlying browser?

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