I think it is just further proof that necessity is the mother of invention.

Flash was invented out of a need for artists to be able to create animations on the web. Now there is a back catalog of Flash content which is losing a home. A swf player of some kind is needed to preserve that content. Someone had to build this.

I completely agree with you. However, I don't think this is a invention directly out of necessity. Instead, I would say closed systems with a controlled goal might be the fertilizer for a better design.

Perhaps, but this is very much a "broken-window theory" type of innovation. If this undoubtedly smart developer hadn't needed to work on this to get around Apple's policy, who knows what more progressive achievement he could have accomplished?