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Comment by ktizo | Hacker News Reader

the company that started the original App Store

I'm sure Sage Networks haven't registered .apple

http://trademarkem.com/sage-networks-appstore-trademark-appl...

Both Sage and Salesforce applied for the 'Appstore' trademark, not 'App Store' as Apple uses it. Also, they describe add-ons that one can buy/rent for their web platform -- that's not what I think of as an 'app'. In any case, I've found no proof that Sage actually used the name, and Salesforce's add-ons shop is named AppExchange.

Let's go further back in time. Software programs on NeXTSTEP have had the extension .app since the first release in 1988. There are plenty of videos around from that time in which Steve Jobs refers to software programs as 'apps'. At the time, it wasn't a common word at all with Mac and PC users. Only after Steve Jobs came back to Apple, it entered Apple vocabulary because he would refer to software programs in that way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_bundle

'Apps' always makes me think of my old archimedes as that is where I first saw the phrase widely used. http://toastytech.com/guis/riscosoldlook.gif

Also, Sage didn't use the name as their attempt to revive their trademark application, which in their filing they describe as "International Class 035: Operating on-line marketplaces for buying, selling and exchanging computer software and on-demand applications", was denied. In 2006.

[edit] I could buy apps for the archimedes in a store. An app store is somewhere to buy apps. Technically speaking the apple app store is a package manager with ecommerce functionality. Very much like the linux predecessor CNR, in other words. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNR_%28software%29

[edit] Wikipedia, that fount of shaky, but vaguely accurate hearsay says that RISCOS was released in 1987. Archimedes computers were widely used in the UK due to being in pretty much all state high schools. Steve was not responsible for bringing the word into the public domain, no matter how much you wish it so.

Very interesting. However, what I was referring to was that Apple was the first company who launched a marketplace for native software programs, a marketplace carrying the name 'App Store', AND which was integrated in the OS. When we speak of 'the App Store', it's obvious whose marketplace we're referring to, even though other companies have launched similar software marketplaces for their own ecosystems (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, etc.)

That's not to say that the separate components of Apple's App Store were particularly novel. Before its launch, there were package managers, there were online marketplaces for software, and the name 'app' had already been used by several platforms. Apple united those ideas, made it a user friendly environment, made it easy to buy apps with one click (using the credit card that was already on file in iTMS), and integrated the update process. That's often how Apple gets their successes, by combining and improving on existing ideas (see OS X, iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc.)

I never used Acorn's Archimedes, but growing up in The Netherlands, the first computers I used were Acorn Electrons, our primary school classroom had six of them. That's how I started programming, in BASIC, at the tender age of 6. I have fond memories of using those machines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Electron

They've always been at least "Applications" on the Mac, which is probably where the NeXTSTEP team got the file extension. On DOS/Windows it was and still is "Executable," though people are starting to casually use "App" everywhere.

Yes, Macintosh software programs were always in the 'Applications' folder. However, we never called them 'apps'. Classic MacOS didn't use file extensions, programs had a 'type code', 'APPL' (ResEdit allowed you to view those codes and edit the resources within an application). At the time, when we used a short word for software programs, we'd call them 'progs'. This changed when Apple acquired NeXT. The Yellow Box software programs in Rhapsody were the first ones I saw that had .app file extensions, and when I went to a preview of that next gen OS in 1997, Steve Jobs repeatedly called them 'apps'.

We can go even further back in time: "Killer app" was a common phrase years before NeXT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_application

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