And the original Mac had a very similar concept with a single file that had an embedded resource fork. And even DOS applications were very often distributed as single folders with all the application files in them, you just needed to run the actual binary manually.

The idea that one-object = one-application is at least as old as desktop computing itself because it fits seamlessly into the file/folder metaphor. Sadly, modern desktops have largely degraded in this regard.

Well, on MacOS they come straight from NeXT so it's no big deal. But what's interesting is that they were on other systems in the 80s too - whereas in the 2000s they were one of the things that made people say MacOS is better than anything else, since only they have these special folders.