At least in Mac OS, they have always been called Apps, and with Mac OS X (2001) they even adopted the ".app" extension (Mail.app, Safari.app.) Steve Jobs used t

At least in Mac OS, they have always been called Apps, and with Mac OS X (2001) they even adopted the ".app" extension (Mail.app, Safari.app.) Steve Jobs used to call them apps in public all they way back to the 80s, even during the NeXT days when they only focused on 'serious' enterprise software. Windows users call them programs and I guess after the 'there's an app for that' campaign, everyone associates apps with smartphones but in reality the term is almost as old as the PC.