I stole one of Steve's sentences, and changed the objects for my own nefarious purposes:
'Build on top of Amber ??? The one thing I like about Amber is the ability to add Smalltalk to do what you wanted.'
Let's consider the possibility of Smalltalk in the browser as a possible tool to build an Etoys-like learning environment. http://amber-lang.net/
Steve wrote: 'By what date do we realistically expect Apple to "see the light" and allow authoring on version of Etoys?'
Never, but with network access an Etoys-like app in the web browser could save to a remote server without ever needing to be approved by Apple's app store. By the same token, "never" means you never get access to the attitude sensor, accelerometer and other fun gadgets unless Apple makes them available to all web developers.
My 2p. David