what's an "app"?

[cochrane]

One great app I have on my iPhone is called Tunein, which lets you listen to over 50,000 radio stations worldwide including most of your local AM and FM stations if you so desire. You can listen over 3G or wifi and it is free.

There are also a few browsers that go beyond what the built in mobile Safari browser does, including locking the rotation so the browser doesn’t change orientation when you rotate the phone and the ability to mimic desktop browsers such as Firefox, IE, and Chrome.

[Kenm]

nm

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@AHunter3

• doesn’t that rather massively clot up your user experience? i would seriously hate to have to have a “Straight Dope app” and a “google app” and a “wikipedia app” and a “youtube app” and so on and so forth for each and every one of my most commonly used web sites. AND THAT’S IF THEY WERE ALL FREE. (do I correctly understand that only some such apps are indeed free?) AND THAT’S IF THEY CAME PREINSTALLED. (presumably not, therefore you have to go acquire each one and install it, yes?)

You need the apps because websites like the SDMB, which doesn’t put up a special mobile version, were designed to be seen on screens much larger than your smartphone. You can read them in the default browser, but it involves a significant amount of hassle in that you have to shrink the screen to near illegibility to figure out what part you want to look at, then zooming into said portion so you can read it. It’s definitely not seamless. Moreover, your device may not even play some of the items on YouTube, depending on choices that were made by the person who uploaded the content at the time of uploading. Moving on, your favorite radio station stream will most likely either not play at all in your browser, or, if it does, the audio will stop as soon as you go back to your home screen, or do something else that obscures the browser. If you want to do these things you need the apps.

[gatorslap]

@Jragon

Not really, nobody really refers to Starcraft II, Chrome, or Photoshop as an “app.” “App.” While it’s technically short for “application,” it’s really a term that’s taken on a life of its own. It’s a lot closer to what “applets” used to be. Whereas applets were tiny little programs that ran in your browser, apps are tiny little programs that run on your phone.

But, consider the widespread use of the term “killer app” to describe a program that helped sales of the platform it was made for. It doesn’t have to be a tiny little program, nor does it have to be for a mobile device or anything like that. Video Toaster was a killer app for Amiga.

I know you weren’t talking about killer apps, just the word “app”, but if something is a killer app, presumably it is also an app.

[drewtwo99]

as the line between desktop computers and handheld computers/cellphones/tablets continues to blur (with things like Windows 8 being on all the computer types), the difference between an “app” and an “application” and a “computer program” is going to get blurrier and blurrier.

I agree that in general, “app” is a term used to describe things on a phone/tablet. But hey, wait. Chrome has a web store where, you can buy apps! And they run on your PC (inside your browser)!! And of course, the term “killer app” as pointed out above can apply to any sort of software.

So, apps are programs that let you get stuff done. My favorite app includes one that lets me listen to online radio stations, and I can search by genre or whatever, wherever and whenever I want.

[ekedolphin]

I don’t bother with the Wikipedia app on my Android phone, because the search function types my query into Google, and any Wikipedia results are usually at or near the top.

The main ones I use are Amazon Kindle, ESPN ScoreCenter, YouTube, Sudoku Free, SoundHound, and GasBuddy (which I highly recommend). All of the ones I listed are free.

Also, Angry Birds Can Ruin Your Life. (But it’s so fun, feed me more!)