Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 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.