4 ms·

It's obvious how much the design of the iPad/iPhone OS has informed this. It's very 'app' centric, which is funny to me because the public's perception of what

by jcw 16y ago

It's obvious how much the design of the iPad/iPhone OS has informed this. It's very 'app' centric, which is funny to me because the public's perception of what an 'app' is is pretty weird. You'd have a hard time describing what a program or an application is to someone, but if you said the word 'app' they'd immediately know what you are talking about, because apps are these little icons that live on their phone. I wouldn't be surprised if someone looking at Launchpad for the first time would be surprised that their macbook "has apps now", even though they are looking at the same applications that have already been on their mac for months. 'App' is definitely a better term than 'application' or 'program' from a UI perspective if more people can so easily understand it, but I don't understand why or how this happened. They're the same thing! It's strange.

netcan 16y ago
In a lot of ways I think the web has informed this. You could describe this as the desktop fighting back. Obviously many of the web genes have come via the ipad/iphone.
cwbrandsma 16y ago
Yes, but how applicable is that when you have 22 inch, dual monitors? For a 15 inch mac book laptop screen it will work tho.
zdw 16y ago
You'd be surprised at how many people didn't know there were programs other than Internet Explorer and Word, and maybe in an office, Outlook, Excel and QuickBooks. Apple has done the job of making independent app developers into (pardon the phrase) rockstars.
dangrover 16y ago
I wrote a post about this a while back: http://dangrover.com/2010/05/29/indie-developers-and-crossing-the-app-store-chasm/ http://dangrover.com/2010/05/29/indie-developers-and-crossin... When I speak of the triumph of the app, I don't mean it as a synonym for "program." That definition has become archaic. I'm talking about "the app" as the unit of software in popular perception. It is the monad. It is the atom. It is the cell. It is the brick. Software is abstract. An app is concrete. Apps obey basic laws. You can install or uninstall their functionality completely. Apps are indivisible. Apps do not come with other apps, they stand alone. Apps do not touch other apps' data without being allowed. In short, the term "app" could best be defined, more broadly, as the finest, most granular level of control over the computing experience that most users can consistently and comfortably exercise.
- moultano 16y ago
  It's amazing how far desktop machines have been from dragging and dropping icons to install/uninstall software. OSX was the closest to this I think, and hopefully they'll get closer? I tend to just assume now that the longer I have a desktop machine, the more miscellaneous bits of old programs will be scattered throughout the system.
  - dangrover 16y ago
    Well, what's nice about the way OS X does it is that dragging the icon isn't a proxy for a bunch of magical installing/uninstalling. You're literally dragging the app from one location in the filesystem to another. But I think the iOS model is good too because the abstraction is not leaky (in the same way that package managers and and installer/uninstallers on windows are)
    - gaelian 16y ago
      I've been using Hazel with OS X for a while now to further facilitate my bordering on obsessive compulsive desire to keep my machine clean. Hazel takes care of preference files etc. that can be left over after trashing a piece of software on OS X. I still remember the moment it dawned on me that my new Mac didn't have a registry, I think I almost shed a tear of joy.
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        I tend to prefer that old preference files be left around - they don't cause me any harm (not even a feeling of clutter, since it's not like I'm poking around ~/Library/Preferences all the time) and if I ever reinstall the app, I'm right back where I was. I can understand that it does bother some folks, though.
        gaelian 16y ago
        I can indeed understand your sentiment also. Hence my description of my behavior bordering on something close to OCD. I think I get that "feeling of clutter" a lot more easily than many people :P For whatever reason though, I guess I don't really reinstall apps very often. Once I decide to remove something, it's almost always after pondering the issue for a little while and making a decision that I very rarely go back on. The only time I can remember reinstalling something on my Mac was Filezilla. I got myself a new FTP client, removed Filezilla as I didn't think I'd be using it anymore and then found out that my new FTP client had a bug that prevented proper connectivity via FTPS. So I went back to Filezilla and as luck would have it, Filezilla's preferences are stored in ~/.filezilla and they were all still there (because I didn't know about this directory). That was a small time saver. I suspect a great deal of my attitude towards being (likely overly) careful about what I install/uninstall and what's left behind afterwards comes from my many years as a Windows user. I remember it even took me a while to figure out that you can usually just drag stuff to the Applications folder to install on a Mac, I kept thinking to myself "I'm missing something, it can't be this simple..."
padmanabhan01 16y ago
//'App' is definitely a better term than 'application' or 'program' from a UI perspective if more people can so easily understand it, but I don't understand why or how this happened. They're the same thing! It's strange I think it's a change in perspective. A 'program' is how a programmer would describe what he codes. An app, is what it should look like to someone who is interested in just using it. Since those using "an app" should outnumber those who wrote "the program", it is better if it's called an app. It's like how the term 'bacon' is better suited than 'pig's belly'.
wmf 16y ago
John Scalzi really nailed it a few months back: "So the new hotness is a screen on which icons are used to access the programs they represent? Just like the Macintosh in 1984?" http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/07/23/todays-cane-shaking-on-the-lawn-apps/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/07/23/todays-cane-shaking-on... I am also reminded of Homer Simpson's "they have the Internet on computers now?"
- cletus 16y ago
  Back in my university days one of my lecturers told me that if you're in the computer industry for long enough you will see the same patterns repeat themselves. The computer industry started with mainframes and time-slicing. We then moved to personal computers. Recent years have seen the rise of cloud computing, which is analagous to... mainframes and time-slicing. Web browsers and mobile devices are used in a way very similar to how thin clients and terminals were once used. Part of it is that technology changes the value proposition of many approaches. We now have more computing power on a desktop PC than most reasonable people will ever need. Microsoft has never recovered from this lack of built-in obsolescence to churn old versions of Windows. But part of it is that the grass is always greener and people are constantly chasing the next big thing that will make everything better. You see this in programming too. C++ is the ultimate proof that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Apart from the rise of garbage collection, very few things have made real productivity differences in programming in the last 10-20 years. Joel Spolsky[1] covered this: > A lot of us thought in the 1990s that the big battle would be between procedural and object oriented programming, and we thought that object oriented programming would provide a big boost in programmer productivity. I thought that, too. Some people still think that. It turns out we were wrong. Object oriented programming is handy dandy, but it's not really the productivity booster that was promised. The real significant productivity advance we've had in programming has been from languages which manage memory for you automatically. It can be with reference counting or garbage collection; it can be Java, Lisp, Visual Basic (even 1.0), Smalltalk, or any of a number of scripting languages. If your programming language allows you to grab a chunk of memory without thinking about how it's going to be released when you're done with it, you're using a managed-memory language, and you are going to be much more efficient than someone using a language in which you have to explicitly manage memory. Whenever you hear someone bragging about how productive their language is, they're probably getting most of that productivity from the automated memory management, even if they misattribute it. [1] : http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
philfreo 16y ago
I think the perception different between "app" and "application" can mostly be credited to Apple's (successful) marketing.
lukasb 16y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if someone looking at Launchpad for the first time would be surprised that their macbook "has apps now", even though they are looking at the same applications that have already been on their mac for months. Exactly. They needed Launchpad because (1) the App Store means that people will have more apps than can comfortably fit on the Dock and (2) average users aren't comfortable finding the Applications folder.
ollysb 16y ago
I wonder if they'll start shipping keyboards with a big button at the bottom ;)

by jcw 16y ago

netcan 16y ago

In a lot of ways I think the web has informed this. You could describe this as the desktop fighting back. Obviously many of the web genes have come via the ipad/iphone.

cwbrandsma 16y ago

Yes, but how applicable is that when you have 22 inch, dual monitors? For a 15 inch mac book laptop screen it will work tho.

zdw 16y ago

You'd be surprised at how many people didn't know there were programs other than Internet Explorer and Word, and maybe in an office, Outlook, Excel and QuickBooks. Apple has done the job of making independent app developers into (pardon the phrase) rockstars.

dangrover 16y ago

I wrote a post about this a while back: http://dangrover.com/2010/05/29/indie-developers-and-crossing-the-app-store-chasm/ http://dangrover.com/2010/05/29/indie-developers-and-crossin... When I speak of the triumph of the app, I don't mean it as a synonym for "program." That definition has become archaic. I'm talking about "the app" as the unit of software in popular perception. It is the monad. It is the atom. It is the cell. It is the brick. Software is abstract. An app is concrete. Apps obey basic laws. You can install or uninstall their functionality completely. Apps are indivisible. Apps do not come with other apps, they stand alone. Apps do not touch other apps' data without being allowed. In short, the term "app" could best be defined, more broadly, as the finest, most granular level of control over the computing experience that most users can consistently and comfortably exercise.

moultano 16y ago
It's amazing how far desktop machines have been from dragging and dropping icons to install/uninstall software. OSX was the closest to this I think, and hopefully they'll get closer? I tend to just assume now that the longer I have a desktop machine, the more miscellaneous bits of old programs will be scattered throughout the system.
- dangrover 16y ago
  Well, what's nice about the way OS X does it is that dragging the icon isn't a proxy for a bunch of magical installing/uninstalling. You're literally dragging the app from one location in the filesystem to another. But I think the iOS model is good too because the abstraction is not leaky (in the same way that package managers and and installer/uninstallers on windows are)
  - gaelian 16y ago
    I've been using Hazel with OS X for a while now to further facilitate my bordering on obsessive compulsive desire to keep my machine clean. Hazel takes care of preference files etc. that can be left over after trashing a piece of software on OS X. I still remember the moment it dawned on me that my new Mac didn't have a registry, I think I almost shed a tear of joy.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      I tend to prefer that old preference files be left around - they don't cause me any harm (not even a feeling of clutter, since it's not like I'm poking around ~/Library/Preferences all the time) and if I ever reinstall the app, I'm right back where I was. I can understand that it does bother some folks, though.
      - gaelian 16y ago
        I can indeed understand your sentiment also. Hence my description of my behavior bordering on something close to OCD. I think I get that "feeling of clutter" a lot more easily than many people :P For whatever reason though, I guess I don't really reinstall apps very often. Once I decide to remove something, it's almost always after pondering the issue for a little while and making a decision that I very rarely go back on. The only time I can remember reinstalling something on my Mac was Filezilla. I got myself a new FTP client, removed Filezilla as I didn't think I'd be using it anymore and then found out that my new FTP client had a bug that prevented proper connectivity via FTPS. So I went back to Filezilla and as luck would have it, Filezilla's preferences are stored in ~/.filezilla and they were all still there (because I didn't know about this directory). That was a small time saver. I suspect a great deal of my attitude towards being (likely overly) careful about what I install/uninstall and what's left behind afterwards comes from my many years as a Windows user. I remember it even took me a while to figure out that you can usually just drag stuff to the Applications folder to install on a Mac, I kept thinking to myself "I'm missing something, it can't be this simple..."

padmanabhan01 16y ago

//'App' is definitely a better term than 'application' or 'program' from a UI perspective if more people can so easily understand it, but I don't understand why or how this happened. They're the same thing! It's strange I think it's a change in perspective. A 'program' is how a programmer would describe what he codes. An app, is what it should look like to someone who is interested in just using it. Since those using "an app" should outnumber those who wrote "the program", it is better if it's called an app. It's like how the term 'bacon' is better suited than 'pig's belly'.

wmf 16y ago

John Scalzi really nailed it a few months back: "So the new hotness is a screen on which icons are used to access the programs they represent? Just like the Macintosh in 1984?" http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/07/23/todays-cane-shaking-on-the-lawn-apps/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/07/23/todays-cane-shaking-on... I am also reminded of Homer Simpson's "they have the Internet on computers now?"

cletus 16y ago
Back in my university days one of my lecturers told me that if you're in the computer industry for long enough you will see the same patterns repeat themselves. The computer industry started with mainframes and time-slicing. We then moved to personal computers. Recent years have seen the rise of cloud computing, which is analagous to... mainframes and time-slicing. Web browsers and mobile devices are used in a way very similar to how thin clients and terminals were once used. Part of it is that technology changes the value proposition of many approaches. We now have more computing power on a desktop PC than most reasonable people will ever need. Microsoft has never recovered from this lack of built-in obsolescence to churn old versions of Windows. But part of it is that the grass is always greener and people are constantly chasing the next big thing that will make everything better. You see this in programming too. C++ is the ultimate proof that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Apart from the rise of garbage collection, very few things have made real productivity differences in programming in the last 10-20 years. Joel Spolsky[1] covered this: > A lot of us thought in the 1990s that the big battle would be between procedural and object oriented programming, and we thought that object oriented programming would provide a big boost in programmer productivity. I thought that, too. Some people still think that. It turns out we were wrong. Object oriented programming is handy dandy, but it's not really the productivity booster that was promised. The real significant productivity advance we've had in programming has been from languages which manage memory for you automatically. It can be with reference counting or garbage collection; it can be Java, Lisp, Visual Basic (even 1.0), Smalltalk, or any of a number of scripting languages. If your programming language allows you to grab a chunk of memory without thinking about how it's going to be released when you're done with it, you're using a managed-memory language, and you are going to be much more efficient than someone using a language in which you have to explicitly manage memory. Whenever you hear someone bragging about how productive their language is, they're probably getting most of that productivity from the automated memory management, even if they misattribute it. [1] : http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

philfreo 16y ago

I think the perception different between "app" and "application" can mostly be credited to Apple's (successful) marketing.

lukasb 16y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if someone looking at Launchpad for the first time would be surprised that their macbook "has apps now", even though they are looking at the same applications that have already been on their mac for months. Exactly. They needed Launchpad because (1) the App Store means that people will have more apps than can comfortably fit on the Dock and (2) average users aren't comfortable finding the Applications folder.

ollysb 16y ago

I wonder if they'll start shipping keyboards with a big button at the bottom ;)