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Comment by alexknight | Hacker News Reader

Contrary to what you may think, the layman doesn't go around saying "I just installed this awesome app". Before the iPhone got "apps" the reality is that the term itself wasn't popular until Apple started referring to "applications" as "apps".

It first started with Steve Jobs calling them "apps" then eventually Apple started renaming everything in iTunes and their documentation from "applications" to just "apps". If your non-tech savvy parents start using the term "app" then I'm pretty sure that speaks for itself and Apple deserves some credit.

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Perhaps the exception is the term "killer app," which is entirely mainstream and surely has been around for at least 20 years.

Indeed! VisiCalc was a killer app on the apple ][.

No, the media has been referring to them as such since the Apple iPhone campaigns. Everyone else has been saying Apps or App in reference to word application for a long time. It is a natural shortening of the term. Just like people refer to videos as vids, automobiles as autos, facsimiles as faxes, and so on.

It saddens me how much of this marketing mythos of "Apple invented $ANYTHING_COOL", even when it has existed for a long time, is so prevalent. It would not surprise me if someone out there was trying to claim apple invented skinny jeans and Jobs was the first jazz musician.

http://lifehacker.com/221920/geek-to-live--the-best-apps-of-...

"Web apps" has been around for a LONG time. "Apps" meaning general applications also predates Jobs.

I don't doubt it's more common now that millions of people have an iOS device that connects to the AppStore, but it was by no means an obscure piece of jargon pre-iphone.

We're talking about consumers here. I don't think anyone doubts the term has been around for a long while in development and business circles but typical consumers never used the terms until the Apple campaigns. My mom also knows what an app is now, only because of her iPhone.

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