I'm a native mandarin speaker from Taiwan and now living in NY. I think it just comes down to the fact that english is not everyone's first language there. For

I'm a native mandarin speaker from Taiwan and now living in NY. I think it just comes down to the fact that english is not everyone's first language there. For your example, people end up pronounce A.P.P because not everyone knows that app comes from `application` and therefore you might run into conversations with people speaking with different pronunciations. Some people pronounce 'app' the normal way, and some people pronounce 'app' similar to (ape). After awhile, people would explain what they're trying to say by spelling out, and eventually you'd learn to just say A.P.P instead of attempting to incorrectly pronounce the word. Same thing goes with Facebook, which is referred as F.B, and Instagram, which is usually referred as I.G