Interesting perspective. I've always thought the lack of an appstore in 1.0 was just pragmatic. It definitely made it easier to launch the first version of iOS and cope with the very limited resources -- 128MB of ram!
At the time, Jobs was showing off how developers could create app-like experiences using HTML - with the ability for people to "install" your app using the add-to-home-screen feature. That was the intended solution for us plebs. Native apps were most likely going to be only for partner companies.
Ironically when people starting creating actual apps using HTML via PhoneGap and the like, Apple was resistant to that too!
