And also sometimes referred to as applications. And while the abbreviation “app” only became mainstream around the time of the first iPhone, the warez scene had a habit of referring to software applications as “appz” since way before then, which admittedly is not the exact same word as “app”, appz being an intentional misspelling of a pluralization of the abbreviation, but it’s close to it. They sure loved the letter z. Appz, crackz, mp3z, moviez, gamez, ebookz.

This way of writing gave people some unique words to query search engines for, making it easier to find warez sites, torrent trackers and ftp servers hosting pirated files but I think it orginated long before the web was born — even before any sort of networked computing existed.

Consider the word “phreaking” which was invented at the time of mechanical telephone switching systems. This word came from combining the words “phone” and “freaking”. I think that word could have inspired hackers to use use ph in place of f in other words, and then once you start making that substitution, other substitutions follow, like using z instead of s.

I dunno, I grew up in the 90s so there is a lot of hacker culture that precedes my time. What I do know is that a lot of early hacker culture spawned other subcultures, and that several influences of the origins remain central in these. For example, the demoscene.