These days it seems like almost anywhere you want to go and anything you want to do, there’s a specialized smartphone app for it. Heck there’s an app for logging on to the Straight Dope Message Board. Doubtless marketing has its reasons for liking that people use apps, but what’s in it for the user?
“App” is short for “application,” i.e., software. A program that performs a function. What’s in it for the user is that they get to perform that particular function, for example, on their phone. Ordering food, transferring money at their bank, taking notes.
In the beginning, as I see it, apps were small bits of software that did specific things. Now every kind of software is an app. I don’t see Microsoft Word as an app. On my Roku TV, the different channels are called apps. I don’t think so.
You ain’t alone in your bewilderment. My computer doesn’t need a separate app for every website, and all the websites have been reconfigured and reshaped to optimize for cellphone screens anyway, so I have no idea why they do that.
You can collect a lot more information from an app than from a browser window connected to your website.
An app is just an application, like ThelmaLou said… a.k.a. a “computer program”. It’s the same thing. Microsoft Word is an app. Wordpad is an app. Photoshop is an app.
Computers have apps, phones have apps, smart TVs have apps… they are just computers in different forms, all running programs. That’s all it means.
Some, but not all, websites are also apps (see more below*). Discourse, for example, is the web app that powers this forum. It’s an “app” because it’s not just a document… it shows posts, sure, but it also handles the dynamic loading of additional replies when you scroll down, the user interface changes which you click on a reply or quote some text or get a notification, etc. In the old days that all happened on a powerful computer server somewhere, but these days, web apps run right in your browser, using your processor and memory and such.
As for why everything needs an app, depending on who you believe, there are two main reasons:
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The “carrot” that they offer is that well-built apps built specifically for your device (like your iPhone or a Windows PC or whatever) can be tailored specifically for that device, making sure to use all its features. That might be a user interface (UI) designed for a big window on a computer. On a phone, it might be a modified look and feel that is properly sized for small screens and is easy to use with taps & swipes. It might also have secondary features, like the ability to send you notifications, or to store some data offline so you don’t have to wait for a web app to load. For example, the Spotify app on your phone can save music for offline usage, so you can still listen to your playlists on a road trip with no cell phone signal. The web app version of Spotify can stream live music while you have a connection, but cannot save them to your device for offline listening. A well-designed, well-made app can indeed offer a superior user experience over a website, but these are far from the “norm”. Most are shitty, half-baked projects made by the lowest bidder and optimized for maximized exploitation of you, rather than for your benefit. See #2.
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Unfortunately, most apps are not really built because they benefit YOU, but because they benefit the company in some way — usually because it offers more opportunities for tracking and advertising. The “stick” they would typically use to coerce you into using their app, then, is usually a more limited (or altogether nonexistent, like with Uber & Lyft) web app version. If they can convince you to move to an app, the idea is that it would:
- Live on your phone for as long as you let it, instead of disappearing once you close the browser window
- Bypass web-based ad blockers like uBlock Origin or Adblock Plus
- Be able to make use of your phone’s saved payment methods to let you the user easily pay for in-app purchases
- Track you as an individual user / device
- Save some server resources for the company, because the app itself is distributed to Apple’s servers instead of their own, and because you don’t have to redownload the app every time you open it, like you would a website. You only download new versions when the app is updated on the app store.
None of these are really benefits for you, but they let the company profit off you more.
* As for web apps, as an aside, for a time around the 2010s, there was an open question of whether apps even made sense anymore, if everything could just be a web app instead. Google took that idea one step further and made something called progressive web apps, a way to save web apps as “fake” apps on your phone or computer. It never really took off, Apple didn’t really like it (it was harder for them to control and monetize), and it’s pretty much a dead concept now.
Whereas the web offered an open platform that could be run on any computer, phone, tablet, etc., each major tech company decided they would rather have more control over their own platform. Apple made their App Store, Google made the Play Store, Microsoft has the Microsoft Store (which very few people actually use), Xbox has its own app store, Playstation has its own app store, PC gaming has its own app store, etc. Each major store takes some percentage of sales and in-app purchases, usually 20-30% of whatever you pay. It’s too lucrative for companies to give up willingly. Perhaps E.U. antitrust action will eventually force some alternatives, especially on the iPhone, but that remains to be seen.
On the other hand, there are companies like Facebook/Meta who don’t necessarily depend on apps to profit off you. Facebook, Instagram, etc. all have apps, but you can also use them to some extent on websites. Some things just won’t work as well, especially notifications on iPhones. And they will generally be a bit slower than native apps, since they have to load the UI code over and over again every time you visit, as opposed to saving it on your device like a native app would. “Native” just means “an app actually built for your platform, usually downloaded from the app store”, as opposed to a website or a fake progressive web app.
If you don’t want to be marketed to or tracked or advertised to, limit your app use as much as possible — both on phones and on computers.
Use a web browser for everything, with something like Firefox, with maximum tracking protection and uBlock Origin with all the filter lists subscribed to.
Apps have long since jumped the shark and gone through the “enshittification” phase, where good tech ideas & products eventually become co-opted by the profit motive and now serve only to extract as much possible value and profit from you, the user.
Unless you can identify a specific reason you want an app, and are sure that that reason isn’t available in the website version… like, for example, “I want to be able to download _____ for offline use” or “I want live notifications whenever _______ happens”… then there’s really no reason to download an app. More often than not, they are built just to track you and spam you with constant advertising.
Websites are too, except that for now, website ads and tracking can be limited by browsers. Google is changing that, though, and Chrome no longer allows the full-power uBlock anymore, only a gimped, watered-down version.
As a user, you are the product. You are not the customer. Advertisers are the customers. The majority of apps and websites engage you only to show you ads and sell you things you don’t need. They exist to serve advertisers, and consider you to be an adversary to overcome (through marketing) and exploited.
The few apps that don’t think of you this way are typically the ones you directly pay money for, either through purchases or subscriptions, but even those usually supplement their income with additional tracking and advertising. It’s all just a big machine to squeeze every possible dollar out of you.
I’m going to add a couple of (more) cynical observations to @Reply’s excellent post. Apps also serve to isolate you from possible competing platforms. If you’re a part of Amazon’s (picking an easy target) ecosystem, using it for shopping, music, movies, etc., by having a single log-in to all of your options is less of a fuss (yes, I’ve just mentioned 3 different apps, but same -login-) which is something of an advantage to you the user. But it also means that you’re not doing a more general search and might see a better value, or even free/mostly free option somewhere else.
Combine that with the various “loyalty rewards” many apps offer, from fast food to even basic grocery shopping, and it serves to limit competition. Not to mention, it means they can advertise a multiplicity of great “deals” that only apply if you use the app, and suddenly don’t apply at checkout if you don’t jump through the hoops. They get their cake and get to eat it too!
Not much different than offering loss leader products (or doorbuster sales) to get people inside a store and keep them there, by loyalty, habit, or some sense of “owing” it to them for the free (or even NOT free stuff).
As Reply added in his revision, a huge part of it is about making you a well-packaged product whether via directed advertising, or by reinforcing your loyalty to whatever “brand” you’re being sold.
ETA
To offer a slightly less cynical viewpoint, it also can be helpful to those who are confused by the endless rabbit holes the internet offers in shopping, information, news and services. Some people can get information overload, and find themselves unable to get whatever it is they actually want. They’re flat not able to find it. Having a business you trust to only exploit you to the realm of reasonably mutual interest can be a big help. And it may prevent losses to individuals who are prone to entering unsafe personal and financial information on sketchy websites.
And that leaves out the younger users, who have literally grown up with touchscreen interfaces, where using a giant physical keyboard and typing in manual searches is something that only dinosaurs do. I’m not saying I agree with the sentiment, I think it leads too far in the direction of various corporate-controlled dystopias, but it’s a reality for them!
I’ve got a few of those, all quite specialized. Typically, what you download is the bare-bones version of what is on offer. To make full use of the app, you need to subscribe, or pay a fee of some sort.
For example, I have a horse racing app, and it will give me all North American thoroughbred tracks running today, conditions for each race, and selections for each race. That’s it, that’s all. If I want past performances like in the print edition of the Racing Form, I have to pay. If I want selections from multiple handicappers, I have to pay. If I want commentary with those selections, I have to pay. I’m happy with the bare-bones version of the app, but I can see where it would get a lot of paying customers.
Yep. That’s all part of their marketing. Make you download the free app with some basic functionality. Then once you’re in it, they can advertise to you both in the app and outside of it with notifications, FOMO sales, etc. There are all sorts of “dark patterns” that professional marketers and consumer psychologists will use to try to manipulate you, either through emotions or user-hostile design, into upgrading and paying more. The FTC has an entire report on these: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P214800%20Dark%20Patterns%20Report%209.14.2022%20-%20FINAL.pdf (Only a few days left! Click now before Musk takes it down!)
The big tech companies built their evil empires on top of these techniques of manipulation. They are not your friends.
Sometimes they’re half-off during Happy Hour.
Caveat emptor is not a recent phrase. Perhaps cave productum should be added.
I’ll add a bit of historical perspective to the excellent information already provided by @Reply and added to by @ParallelLines.
The term “app”, as already said, is a contraction of what was originally termed an “application”, which itself is a short form for “application program”. Back in the days long before PCs, let alone “smart” phones, an application program was a piece of software that provided a specific user function, like word processing or accounting or inventory management or whatever. The name arose in order to make a distinction between such an application program and a “system program”. A system program was software, usually supplied by a computer manufacturer, that supplemented the operating system itself by performing generic system-related functions such as, for example, displaying a list of your files, or deleting, copying, or printing them.
Things began to change with the arrival of the internet, and with it, the emergence of the “world-wide web” and web browsers. As browsers and the servers they accessed became more powerful and the web became more and more ubiquitous, two things started to happen. One was the recognition that the browser could function as a generic UI to a server and perform many of the functions that previously required a dedicated application. This was called the “thin client” mode of computing, where the client-side (your computer) only had to run a basic browser and the server did all the work. This was a useful concept and in the context of Good and Evil, it was mostly Good. When you can use just about any browser with the right features to read and post to the Dope, you’re using the thin-client model.
But because browsers were so central to computing now, the Browser Wars set in. Everyone wanted you to run their browser so they could control and track your usage. Microsoft got into anti-trust trouble when then tried to pretend that Internet Explorer was an integral part of Windows and couldn’t be separated from it, so that’s what everyone had to use as a browser.
What we now call “apps” on mobile devices are the ultimate outgrowth of the old browser wars, and represent concerted efforts by commercial enterprises to reverse the thin-client model and directly manage, control, and monetize the user experience via their own dedicated applications in all the ways that the previous posters have outlined. I loathe both the term and what it stands for.
“Notifications on iPhones” is a way of sucking you back into social media when you’re trying to concentrate on something else. It is not a feature that benefits users.
Yeah, they are very, very often misused for nefarious purposes 
But I do get some “useful” notifications from certain apps, like when my family sends me an instant message, or Google Maps tells me when my partner is leaving work so I can start getting ready for the night’s outing, or the doorbell lets me know when a package has been delivered so I can go home and bring it in, etc. Out of the maybe 30-40 apps I have installed, maybe only 4-5 are allowed to send notifications. They are the few I actually want real-time alerts form.
On Android, “well-behaved” apps will let you selectively disable notifications by category, like allowing messages from friends but disallowing advertising notifications. The ones that aren’t well behaved get ALL their notifications turned off and/or uninstalled completely. Not sure how the granularity works on iPhones.
These are exactly right and I agree completely.
The “thin client” experience mentioned above, where the web browser acts as a front end to funnel the back-end processing, is perfectly sufficient to handle 99% of what you need to do on a computing device. Indeed, many apps, if you take them apart, are nothing more than specialized adaptations of web browsers, functioning as a thin client on top of back-end computing.
But, as mentioned above, a standalone app gets certain special privileges that a web browser doesn’t, even if the app’s core functionality is basically indistinguishable. This is what allows the app to reach into your contacts list, track your location, and otherwise compromise your privacy in the name of convenience.
Consider, for example, one of the worst offenders: TikTok. They really, really want you to use the app. You can look at their videos on the web. But if you’re on a mobile device, they will pop up an interrupt, inviting you to install the app. Sometimes you can bypass that, and view the video in the web browser anyway. But, more and more, they just refuse to serve you the video, insisting that it’s unavailable outside the app. Occasionally, they won’t even ask; on my Android device, they’ll just automatically trigger Google Play and present me with the TikTok page so it’s “easy” to install the app.
So I’ll second the advice above. Stay in the web browser, as much as possible. Don’t install the app unless (a) you absolutely, completely trust the app maker, and/or (b) you absolutely, positively need the functionality in the app and don’t have another option. And then go through your device permissions and, to whatever extent you have granular control, block the app’s use of anything and everything that doesn’t make sense. (Example: I understand why a tourism app needs my location while the app is active, to offer me attractions that are close to me. But does it need my location when I’m not using the app? And why does it need my contact list, or my microphone? It doesn’t. Fuck you, app. Blocked.) If the app then complains that it can’t work without those invasive permissions, then that’s all the proof you need that the app can’t be trusted and should be removed immediately.
And then, further, uninstall apps if you no longer use them. Keep your device clean. You may not know if the app silently updates itself with new functionality and new permissions, and unless you’re watching very closely you won’t know if the app is continuing to silently ping the mothership in the background, even if you quit using it six months ago. (Mobile OSes are supposed to warn you about this kind of stuff, but it’s not terribly consistent in my experience.) I have my device configured with strict limitations on apps; if I don’t use something for two weeks, it’s forced to sleep, and then after a month, it’s put into deep hibernation. And I review my device regularly, removing things I don’t use or that I don’t recognize (which have often been pushed at me by the device maker: fuck you, Samsung).
The general conclusion of all this, unfortunately, is that, more and more, apps suck and are invasive and unnecessary by default, unless proven otherwise.
Drove me crazy when people first started calling programs ‘Apps’. But I’ve finally gotten used to it. I now just consider programs much deeper and far reaching than an app. I see a program as something that will reach into multiple databases to interact with them. Where as an app might be the wrapper around that.
But that’s just like my opinion man.
In the Windows/PC world, program was the preferred term. In the Apple/Mac world however, it was application. With the move to Mac OS X, Apple chose the file extension .app for applications, though it’s often not revealed. I assume the rise of the iPhone popularized the more Apple-centric term, but the first iPhone “apps” were web-based as previously mentioned. They weren’t full applications, they were more like applets, which are mini-applications similar to plugins, like Flash, Java, or QuickTime. So while there may not be a direct progression from application to applet to app, there’s at least a plausible evolution of the term. Also, application is a bit of a mouthful, and prog just sounds…unpleasant.
Superb answers already. One of the early and easy to understand reasons for apps on mobiles was trying to achieve vendor lock-in. This was mentioned upthread as part of a larger bundle of features. But historically it was one of the biggees.
If you use your mobile browser to go to Home Depot ‘s site, then Lowes’ site is just one click away. And vice versa. If you’re instead accessing either through their dedicated app, the other is totally inaccessible and also out of sight, out ot mind.
Worst of all (for them), if your habit is to use your browser and hit Google or Bing for e.g. [28" Ceiling Fan], you’ll get results from both Home Depot and Lowes and you can easily comparison shop. Both stores hate that idea. If they can persuade you to use the e.g. Home Depot app and search there for [28" Ceiling Fan] they win.
At least they don’t call us programmers “computer applicators” yet.
That’s applicationist to you, young whippersnapper! 