In this era (~'98-'12), the web provided a bridge over a moat formed by a competitor's proprietary stack winning through momentum and network effects. The web went "over the top" of both Macs and PCs, and while Apple desperately coveted native app builders for the Mac, was at least savvy enough to know that if it could add the universe of great web apps to the Mac experience, it would be a market-reality help at point of sale.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
The Mac is *still* a niche computing product to this day, and it's fascinating to me that the web continues to play this role for Apple in it's smaller business.
Then iOS happened.
Many older web developers pass down a story of how iOS isn't actually anti-web because Jobs initially pitched it as a web-first OS. As someone who was in the room for the unveil, I can tell you that was also my first impression, but it wore off a year later when iOS 2.0 launched.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac