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In my experience, end-user programs you'd run and operate were called "applications" or "programs", and it was a specialist term anyway, because general population didn't think in terms of applications anyway - they thought in terms of "running Word" or "running Google", with the machine itself an implementation detail. As I remember it, the term "app" came from smartphones, where it referred specifically to smartphone applications. Connotations were rather negative - inferior facsimile of the real thing (not even a full application - just an "app"), also came from "app marketplace"[0][1]. And to this days, apps are inferior to their desktop counterparts (at least surviving ones), except marketing won this one - people got used to this term, then some vendors started calling desktop software "apps", and now suddenly everything is an app. -- [0] - To this day I roll my eyes at the mental model here. It feels unnatural and wrong, but that's maybe because I'm not used to think in terms of trying to find markets and money-making opportunities everywhere. [1] - Or maybe it was just a huge letdown to me, and I'm soured ever since. Back when first iPhones and then Android came out, I was hoping a full-blown computer with a Linux on board would mean it'll be much easier to just write your own stuff for it. That it would feel more like a desktop in terms of functionality, capabilities, opportunities. I did not expect them to come up with "app stores" and lock the thing down, and made you accept the mark of the beast, entangle yourself with the commercial universe, just to be able to add your own joke app or such. Since then, it only got worse. |