It has been Steve's modus operandi since the early eighties to make such statements in public and in private to stop customers and employees focusing on matters they shouldn't be. It was the right move to focus on releasing the iPhone without an SDK, and to distract the issue with the webkit "solution".

It will have gotten the product out the door much, much faster than if they made it battle-hardened against third parties from day one.

It's worth noting that the SDK was released just nine months after product launch and the full app store experience came within twelve months of launch. For a 1.0 release, the SDK was quite polished and surprisingly well documented -- hardly the product of a last minute change of heart.