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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

We didn't have "apps" in the 80's we had "programs".

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.micro.mac/1CVsNTbXA6g/tS...

    From: t-jacobs@utah-cs.UUCP (Tony Jacobs)
    Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
    Subject: MultiMac MULTITASKING!
    Date: Thu, 21-Nov-85 12:12:47 EST

    ...

    It doesn't work with some programs (like MacPaint)
    and some apps need to be the first app loaded to work 
    (like MacDraw.)  When you run multiple sound apps the 
    first one run is the one that works, the rest will 
    run but you don't hear a them.

    ...

Id forgotten that horror. The order things loaded in, my god. It was actual witchcraft trying to get a stable machine, and if achieved you still had the special rituals to help it past the cursed extensions.

Reminds me of this picture: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/600x315/e9/ff/28/e9ff28...

Why does Steve Jobs have braces?

[0]

[0] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/xbox-360-kid

That may be the case for the Spectrum, but not for the Mac.

They have always been referred to as "applications" on the Mac, and I know that was abbreviated as "apps" by the mid-90s. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that abbreviation was used by Mac users as far back as the 80s.

Atari's GEM/TOS also had applications, abbreviated as "app", in the mid-80s. I don't know where people got the idea that "app" is something recent, but I've started seeing people say it in a few places lately. It's not true at all, we definitely had apps in the 80s.

I think those people are saying -- reasonably -- that the word app is recent in the mainstream popular language, not that it was never ever used by anyone until the iPhone.

Windows called them programs (until recently), and Android & iOS call them apps, so it's likely that most people have only started hearing the term in the last 10 years.

Best i can tell, win32 binaries are still programs, UWP binaries are apps.

All in all i can't shake the feel that apps are more "restrictive" in how they can be used...

So long as we all agree the term "applet" was asinine. :)

I remember hearing the Windows control panel functions referred to as applets 20 years ago or so. Likewise, java programs embedded into a web page were also called applets.

Is applet but a diminution of application, or of app?

Why do all my programs end it .PRG then? :P (currently struggling to get data off of an old ST - good old RS232 strikes again)

Fellow ST user here! .prg was the most common extension but .app was certainly used in some cases. I think it denoted a different format.

Weren't .prgs the actual "foreground"-programs while .apps were the small helper tools that ran in the background and stayed resident even if not in focus? I distantly remember some apps getting a spot in the menu bar...

(It's been ages since I touched that system, good times, though.)

The resident tools were .ACC (desktop accessories).

Ahh, right. Thanks for the refresher!

Actually, the .app extension Das sometimes used. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_TOS

...and no "coders" neither. We were programmers! But we were 'appy!

Folks also called themselves computer software engineers too

-edited for clarity

And hackers

I wonder what synonyms there are for 'computer program.' Does 'application' count?

Are there any synonyms for 'pedantry' that you can think of?

There are vast numbers of programs that run without a UI for people to use.

There are also vast numbers of programs designed for action entertainment.

Then there are programs like spreadsheets and word processors that are "applications" -- programs with a humane UI, purely for end users, designed mainly to be employed for some other specific productive purpose rather than to be used in themselves.

It is true that we now have the more generic "app" thanks to the iPhone,[1] but I think at this point the word is only a little more established in the language than "on fleek."

But even when that changes, it won't mean that when grown-ups observe the history and meaning of words as they are actually used they are engaging in "pedantry."

[1] (Yes, I know there are examples of prior usage of "app" from long before 2007. I'm talking about widespread, mainstream language, not your technical chats with RMS when you were a comp sci grad student in the 1970s.)

> I wonder what synonyms there are for 'computer program.' Does 'application' count?

"Application" definitely counts, but for some inscrutable reason I associate that with GUI-only programs.

> Are there any synonyms for 'pedantry' that you can think of?

"dogmatism", "purism", "literalism"... but maybe I'm being too literal, puritanical, or dogmatic. :)

I think all of your examples fit perfectly haha :)

From the video, it looks like it is loading a BASIC program and then running it. So the term "program" is a better description to this rather than "app" or even "application program" which (to me at least) implies something precompiled and ready to run.

Steve Jobs using the term "apps" in 1990:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdPb8eh_m7Q&t=27s

It really just depends on what the platform you're talking about called them.

Lotus 1-2-3 was commonly described as the "killer app" for the IBM PC as early as 1987.

Yes, but "application" didn't mean "program", it meant "application". Lotus 1-2-3 was an application of PCs, it made PCs useful.

I thought the etymology was from function application.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apply

I doubt it. If anything, they probably just have common origins.

Apply originates from functional languages which did exist at the time, but were not really used outside of research.

Occam's Razor tells me that it most likely came out from "how you use the computer" and then it evolved to refer to the program itself.

Ok... Then explain why it was common to encounter the phrase "killer app" in marketing materials in the 80's.

I thought this was a relatively recent term. Can't find anything on archive.org that would indicate it was used in the 80s:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28killer%20app%29%20AN...

Wikipedia says:

> The first recorded use of the term in print was 1987, in PC Week 8 Sept. 107/2. "Everybody has only one killer application. The secretary has a word processor. The manager has a spreadsheet."

The phrase killer app first appears in print circa 1986 according to Google Ngram Viewer [0].

While a search for just app with Ngram Viewer would contain too much noise, we can reasonably assume that app must have been prevalent in technical jargon before that time, else marketing campaigns would not have used it.

Archive.org isn't reliable for this kind of query.

[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=killer+app&yea...

exactly my first thought after reading the headline even though I was born well after the 80s.

If memory serves, my 386SX also had plenty of 'executives'.

In classic MacOS, the full name was "application program".

...Because you could also have DAs and CDEVs

progs, apps, and warez

Exactly what I wanted to comment.

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