There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got
everything you need if you know how to
write apps using the most modern web
standards to write amazing apps for the
iPhone today.
It was a crowd of Apple Mac OS X developers though, with a great deal of expertise in Obj-C, not the web, so it shouldn't be taken as an objective verdict on whether it was a good strategy or not.
I think it was inevitable. And probably planned for a second release too. Not that web APIs were lacking, but purely from performance perspective. By then, web was designed for 2GHz/2Gb desktop, not a 200MHz cpu from a dvd player.
Well he changed his mind more often and quickly than you can say "magical thinking". Still, better to seem certain when speaking to investors, developers and other get-rich-quick types.