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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.

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That was in a different world, this is the home computer sphere, its a program.

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

The term "killer app" goes back a long way (back to the early 80s) and was first used for Visicalc, I think.

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