As the article points out, this is exactly the same argument they made to justify the webapp-only restriction in the previous iteration. That particular restriction has now been lifted and the world has not ended... It makes you wonder why the restriction was there in the first place, and how important the current set of restrictions will turn out to be.
Considering that (1) the jailbreak folks had a dev environment within a month of release with zero support from Apple and (2) the phone shipped with a bunch of applications that had to have been written with, y'know, tools of some kind; I'd say that yes, it really was about as easy as clicking "enable".
Apple is a quick agile company and certainly has shipped products quickly in the past. You're honestly arguing that taking 13 months (or whatever it was) to release a native SDK was because they just couldn't do it any faster?
Of course the jailbreakers threw together a dev environment quickly. They didn't have to make a business decision to do so. They didn't need a budget or a strategic plan. They didn't need buy-in from anyone.
They didn't have to have their decisions vetted by a management team and a legal team. They almost certainly didn't do any usability testing or write a set of human interface guidelines. They didn't have to make design decisions that they could live with for the next five years, or (as with the decisions made by the designers of the original Mac OS) twenty-five years.
They didn't need to make an official announcement, or run a beta program lasting several months so that developers had a chance to have apps ready on launch day. They didn't have to invest in developer training materials or write formal documentation.
They didn't have to build an entire app store that was secure, cross-platform, usable by customers, relatively free of bugs, and ready to scale so that it would handle one million users in its first weekend.
And, when the jailbreak apps break, the developers don't get hammered by guys like Walt Mossberg, David Pogue, and every analyst and pundit on Wall Street. When end users complain that their phone battery life is too short, the jailbreakers don't need to respond. They aren't obligated to fix security holes or support developers who have problems. They aren't obligated to support anyone. They're open-source hackers, they can't get fired, and they always have the option to say caveat emptor and go do something else.
There's a reason why people pay for Apple's stuff. Apple adds value. But adding value takes time and money.
business decision ... strategic plan ... buy-in ... vetted by ... legal team ... formal documentation
If these are really the reasons for the SDK's delay and ugliness, then we should celebrate: Apple is already dying. This is just silly. Truly successful products (including the iPhone) happen without this stuff all the time, and these are never required criteria. Your list is just a list of excuses.
Truly successful products (including the iPhone) happen without this stuff all the time
Which products are you talking about?
And, if Apple is dying, pray tell which of its many competitors is killing it? They don't have to outrun imaginary competition, after all. They only have to outrun the competition that physically exists.
