From: [email protected] (Tony Jacobs)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: MultiMac MULTITASKING!
Date: Thu, 21-Nov-85 12:12:47 EST
...
It doesn't work with some programs (like MacPaint)
and some apps need to be the first app loaded to work
(like MacDraw.) When you run multiple sound apps the
first one run is the one that works, the rest will
run but you don't hear a them.
...
They have always been referred to as "applications" on the Mac, and I know that was abbreviated as "apps" by the mid-90s. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that abbreviation was used by Mac users as far back as the 80s.
Is applet but a diminution of application, or of app?
All in all i can't shake the feel that apps are more "restrictive" in how they can be used...
(It's been ages since I touched that system, good times, though.)
-edited for clarity
Are there any synonyms for 'pedantry' that you can think of?
"Application" definitely counts, but for some inscrutable reason I associate that with GUI-only programs.
> Are there any synonyms for 'pedantry' that you can think of?
"dogmatism", "purism", "literalism"... but maybe I'm being too literal, puritanical, or dogmatic. :)
There are also vast numbers of programs designed for action entertainment.
Then there are programs like spreadsheets and word processors that are "applications" -- programs with a humane UI, purely for end users, designed mainly to be employed for some other specific productive purpose rather than to be used in themselves.
It is true that we now have the more generic "app" thanks to the iPhone,[1] but I think at this point the word is only a little more established in the language than "on fleek."
But even when that changes, it won't mean that when grown-ups observe the history and meaning of words as they are actually used they are engaging in "pedantry."
[1] (Yes, I know there are examples of prior usage of "app" from long before 2007. I'm talking about widespread, mainstream language, not your technical chats with RMS when you were a comp sci grad student in the 1970s.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdPb8eh_m7Q&t=27s
It really just depends on what the platform you're talking about called them.
Apply originates from functional languages which did exist at the time, but were not really used outside of research.
Occam's Razor tells me that it most likely came out from "how you use the computer" and then it evolved to refer to the program itself.
https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28killer%20app%29%20AN...
> The first recorded use of the term in print was 1987, in PC Week 8 Sept. 107/2. "Everybody has only one killer application. The secretary has a word processor. The manager has a spreadsheet."
While a search for just app with Ngram Viewer would contain too much noise, we can reasonably assume that app must have been prevalent in technical jargon before that time, else marketing campaigns would not have used it.
Archive.org isn't reliable for this kind of query.
[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=killer+app&yea...