5 ms·

Pretty sad they're calling this an "app". If it's dated to 1996, clearly it's a "program"!

• miahi 9y ago
  Everything is an "app" now. For me it sounds cheaper, somehow trivializing the work of many.
  • enraged_camel 9y ago
    Yes, it definitely has a connotation of commoditization.
    • nikofeyn 9y ago
      for many of its uses, it isn't just a connotation. mobiles apps have been commoditized to a point. social apps, messaging apps, cloud storage apps, mobile games, etc. are all basically commodities.
• concede_pluto 9y ago
  MIME was using "application" in media type names in 1996. I think macOS may have started it because they needed to distinguish them from desk accessories.
  • walkingolof 9y ago
    That was in a different world, this is the home computer sphere, its a program.
    • Symbiote 9y ago
      RISC OS, the OS from the company that later became ARM, used "application" from at least 1987, and by 1991 that had been abbreviated to "Apps" in some of the UI, although I think we still said "application." These were school or home computers. Picture under RISC OS 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS
      • tjl 9y ago
        The term "killer app" goes back a long way (back to the early 80s) and was first used for Visicalc, I think.
• frou_dh 9y ago
  NeXTSTEP was around in the early 90s and used the file extension .app
  • mrmondo 9y ago
    Oh that’s a good point you have there and app is just an abbreviation of Application which I think philosophically was a subset of Programs / Programmes.
    • memsom 9y ago
      It's always Program; in British English Program and Programme are not interchangeable and mean something quite different. A Program is a piece of computer software, a Programme is a series of planned events or a sheet of paper/booklet listing a series of details about an events. That we use the two distinctly is pretty powerful and the ambiguity of using one spelling is removed.
  • lokedhs 9y ago
    The Atari ST operating system used .APP as well. This was in 1985.
    • cmrdporcupine 9y ago
      .app was rarely used though. Most things used the .prg extension.
  • mattl 9y ago
    NeXTSTEP was around in the late 80s, came out in 1988.
• Someone 9y ago
  "Application" was around way earlier, as shorthand for "application program" (to be distinguished from "utility program", and, possibly, "game") For examples look at the search hits in https://archive.org/stream/1981-03-compute-magazine/Compute_Issue_010_1981_Mar#page/n0/mode/1up/search/Application https://archive.org/stream/1981-03-compute-magazine/Compute_.... I wouldn't call this an application, though. "App" is completely wrong, as it was introduced by Apple for user-facing programs running on a mobile phone (if Android had been the OS popularizing this, Google would have picked the first three letters of its company name as the new name for these things, and every web site would have a banner "install our goo" :-))
  • eropple 9y ago
    "App" significantly predates the iPhone. Binary/warez sites regularly used "apps" as a shorthand, NeXTSTEP used .app before Apple bought it...heck, Apple called an early Mac development framework "MacApp". We've been calling applications "apps" for going on thirty years at a minimum.
    • OJFord 9y ago
      Mobiles pre-smartphone boasted of their 'Java App Library', too. I don't know anyone who used one deliberately though, with the slow and extortionately priced data of the time.
      • Neliquat 9y ago
        Agreed. I used some awesome java apps back in the say, but always shared between friends via sync cable. Data was for people more affluent than I. I still recall selling nokia headphone adapters like crazy. They had pins, but no 1/8" jack was commonly available, so I hacked the handsfree ones, moving the mic pin to be stereo instead, and doubling up the grounds on either side for a better connection.
      • Shikadi 9y ago
        Also Java applets
    • 9y ago