Keep in mind that the 1st-gen iPhone only supported a small set of built-in apps. Third-party apps didn't appear until 2008.

<https://www.macstories.net/stories/10-years-of-app-store-a-t...>

HN discussion at the time:

- Apple iPhone SDK Event: iFund - $100 Million for iPhone Devs <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=130686>

And some early skepticism: "iPhone SDK And Restrictions: Some Of The Details Aren’t Great" (7 Mar 2008) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131171> Mostly concerns limitations on the API and what capabilities are exposed.

And for those who care to do more digging, a couple of searches bounded on 5 Mar 2008 -- 6 Mar 2012, the first 4 years of the App store:

"iphone sdk": <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1331078400&dateRange=custom&...>

"iphone apps": <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1331078400&dateRange=custom&...>

"iOS apps": <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1331078400&dateRange=custom&...>

A very cursory eyeball of those shows some interest, but nothing overwhelmingly panglossian or critical. But I've not looked in depth.

Yes, I am 37. What about you? I was hosting an IRCd on my 33.2k modem at night using Hybrid-IRCd before that ratbox. I recall XFree86 before Xorg and running Linux on my 486dx running kernel 2.x

https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=icepac...

My first mobile phone was a Siemens m35i, eventually followed by a Sony Ericsson k500.

Where the Nokia 3310 phone couls receive animated icons via SMS messages that displayed on the background as well as looking at ascii smut via WAP at the age of 15.

So yes, what do you take me for? A disappointed cynical 37 year old who's watched the world burn in to a walled garden of hell that folk enjoy licking the grey walls of.

I do recall the rainbow fences where one could happily jump over if you got bored. Where anxiety wasn't a thing and folk were in touch with nature.