I don't want to claim to know what Steve would have done, but this does not seem at all unlike him. He was extremely focused on user experience, but he was also a huge believer in bringing technologies under Apple's control, and making hard decisions that would benefit Apple and Apple users in the long run.
I can think of plenty of things that Apple did that everybody hated on day 1 because they caused immediate pain, but in the long run were for the best. The decision to drop almost all existing connectors for USB. Mac OS X (which was just unusably bad for a year or two, if your apps even ran on it yet). The Intel transition.
The complaints continue today: the Macbook Retina display means half my apps look bad, and the Lightning connector is a slap in the face to everyone with 30-pin docks. And Maps version 1 is terrible (even though they look better than Google's first Maps release, to me).
No surprise at all that Apple wants to be in full control of every app they ship on iOS. The last time I remember them doing that on the Mac was perhaps Internet Explorer. Can you remember how bad Safari 1.0 was?
I can think of plenty of things that Apple did that everybody hated on day 1 because they caused immediate pain, but in the long run were for the best. The decision to drop almost all existing connectors for USB. Mac OS X (which was just unusably bad for a year or two, if your apps even ran on it yet). The Intel transition.
The complaints continue today: the Macbook Retina display means half my apps look bad, and the Lightning connector is a slap in the face to everyone with 30-pin docks. And Maps version 1 is terrible (even though they look better than Google's first Maps release, to me).
No surprise at all that Apple wants to be in full control of every app they ship on iOS. The last time I remember them doing that on the Mac was perhaps Internet Explorer. Can you remember how bad Safari 1.0 was?