I think it originated with the very limited-function items that would run on the first generations of phones. Apps were barely stand-alone and often relied on built-in functions, more like a fancy macro or a Win7 gadget than a true program. There are still some of those around but most “apps” are programs for iOS and Android. And now the term has backflowed to full-scale systems that use “programs.”
I can never figure out whether to say “directory” or “folder,” either.
Nah. There are Windows programs you can buy, download and install in more or less one step as well. I don’t think a streamlined installer makes it one or the other.
Folders and directories aren’t the same thing. A directory directs you to something, but doesn’t contain the thing. You can have a variety of directories that tell you how to find a thing. A folder is just a container. An object can be in only one place, but could be listed in any number of directories.
Though, when the Quick and a Dirty Operating System was created, they limited the number of directories a thing could be listed in, and in the systems that derive from this including DOS and Windows, it has stayed that way.
Well, so it is from a technical “I know where every bit on the hard drive” perspective, but from a user perspective… DOS and Windows called them directories and so I still tend to, but “folders” crept in somewhere. The technical difference has nothing to do with popular usage, whether it should or not.
Directories, as we’ve known them, have been around since Unix was developed in the late 1960’s, and maybe has roots in even earlier systems of the day. It’s nothing more than a data structure containing a list of files (and some other objects) along with information sufficient to gain access to those files and objects.
Originally, a disk device (e.g., a floppy disk or a hard disk) had just ONE directory (which went by various names in various operating systems) and that was all. There was no such thing as a hierarchical file system, in which a directory could contain another directory, ad infinitum.
With the advent of graphical-oriented systems (pioneered, for example, at Stanford), there arose the idea of using a typical business office as a metaphor for things in a computer. I don’t know how far they went with that in those days. But Microsoft, in their Windows systems, ran with the office metaphor. The main screen was called the “desktop”; objects were depicted by little pictures representing things that you might have laying around on your physical desk. Collections of data had long since become known as “files”. Collections of documents (files) were kept in “folders”, suggesting a manila folder. AFAIK, it was Microsoft that really pushed the office-metaphor and its terminology, such as referring to directories as folders.
Now, “folders” can contain all sorts of other things these days: All your printers are listed together in a “Printers” folder. All your e-mails can be listed together in an “e-mails” folder within your e-mail app. Your pictures (which are just data files) are in a “Pictures” folder; your music (just data files) are in a “Music” folder, and so on. The trend has been to identify objects in ways that are meaningful to the user (pictures, music, printers, contacts, favorites, etc.) and collect them into “folders” of similar objects – and to move away from the old terms like files and directories.
