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by mwfunk 1686 days ago
Really the entire personal computer industry's early success was due to VisiCalc, followed by Lotus 1-2-3. Likewise for WordStar, then WordPerfect. It was the first thing I ever heard referred to in the press as a "killer app", which I think of every time someone here makes the claim that nobody called applications "apps" before the iOS App Store.
4 comments
blacksmith_tb 1686 days ago
There's some nuance there though, "killer app" is sometimes short for "application" in the sense of "use" not "program"[1]. When Steve Jobs said "the killer app is making calls." in the iPhone intro, he wasn't talking about the dialer app.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_application#Usage

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drewcoo 1686 days ago
That was his attempt to stretch and own the term. The term that had been credited instead of St. Jobs with Apple's success.
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blacksmith_tb 1685 days ago
Later on the App Store could certainly be credited with Apple's success, but not during the iPhone intro, though? I think people had been saying "our killer app is X" (where X was not a piece of software but an approach to doing something) for quite a while before that.
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codetrotter 1686 days ago
> every time someone here makes the claim that nobody called applications "apps" before the iOS App Store.

Also I remember that many warez sites used to have a section called “appz” where you could find cracked applications for Windows. This was before the iPhone even existed.

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retrac 1686 days ago
Terminologically speaking, it's always been applications in the Apple world, since at least the Macintosh in 1984. The type for an executable program was APPL. And I don't think that's for "Apple", though it's a sound association marketers might like.

It does makes sense to distinguish the software on the machine you run to maintain the machine (most software, once upon a time) from the software you run to do your actual work. Now that iOS and Android are mostly set it and forget it, I'm not surprised app has come back. Though the App Store is surely an influence.

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chasil 1686 days ago
I actually used Microsoft Multiplan for a short time.

Both Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony remain embedded in my muscle memory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan

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