

Ask HN: is App an Apple word? - sambeau

There's a discussion going on over at Slashdot about the word App. I'm finding it all a re-write of history. As far as I remember it it went more like this.<p>* Apple pre-1996 never referred to apps, just Applications. Neither did anyone else.<p>* Sun, with Java, had Applets. I don't recall them ever being shortened to 'apps'<p>* When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 he brought with him the term 'App'. I remember cringing every time he said it in a Keynote.<p>My theory is that it's a NeXT term derived from the .app extension. But for this to be true NextStep would have needed .app bundles too (and I can't remember if it did). If not it could also be from the early days of OSX.<p>EDIT: It seems that NeXTSTEP did have Application Bundles as I had thought:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Bundle<p>Does anyone have any concrete evidence why this isn't the case?
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wooster
Searching Ngram viewer for "killer app" says maybe:

<http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=killer+app>

It's hard to establish a causal relationship though. Most of the uses of "app"
prior to that were shortened versions of "application" as in the "I submitted
a job app." sense.

Coming from working at Apple from 2003-2008, we used "app" all the time to
refer to software. From that perspective, it seemed like a NeXT thing.

(As an aside, isn't it awesome we live in a time when a tool exists to
research word usage across hundreds of years worth of books? Hooray to the
future!)

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derrida
How was the word "app" used 1650-1700?

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=app%2C+applicatio...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=app%2C+applications&year_start=1500&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

Maybe Jobs didn't invent it after all?!

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sambeau
:)

Actually, if you look at the results it's merely an artefact of scanning
problems. The gothic 'r' seems to be being misread in words like 'apprehend'

[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22app%22&tbs=bks:1,cdr:1...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22app%22&tbs=bks:1,cdr:1,cd_min:1671,cd_max:1689&lr=lang_en)

if you do a similar search for 'ehend' you see a graph showing the usage of
gothic dying out!

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=ehend&year_st...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=ehend&year_start=1500&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

clicking through shows lots of "app-ehend" and "app/ehend"

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derrida
+1. Awesome!

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_delirium
It was definitely used in the BBS scene in the 80s/90s, but perhaps you're
meaning mainstream usage by companies? I seem to recall it originating in the
warez scene, where games v. utils v. apps was a common way of sorting
software, but it was used more widely than that as well.

Here are some Usenet examples of "DOS app" being used in the 80s:
[http://groups.google.com/groups/search?as_q=&as_epq=DOS+...](http://groups.google.com/groups/search?as_q=&as_epq=DOS+app&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&scoring=&lr=&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=&as_drrb=b&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1990&as_ugroup=&as_usubject=&as_uauthors=&safe=off)

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dawson
We had an issue quite recently with this regarding the use of "App-Store". APP
STORE is a registered trade mark of Apple across the EU. Not sure about "app",
but our trademark solicitor made us remove it from our marketing anyway. We're
now an "application store", an even that she wasn't happy with, suggesting we
use "application shop" instead, as "store" was too synonymous.

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solipsist
Who knows, maybe Apple could even trademark the word "app" if they followed in
Facebook's footsteps: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373258,00.asp>

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acwalker
App is short for application.

People use the same abbrevations for things like applying to university

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andre3k1
Is Exe a Microsoft word?

EDIT: In my opinion, it's all about context.

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sambeau
Yes. I would say it is - and it definitely got used in exactly the same way.

