app

[Short for APPLICATION.]

(1) Software that is used for business or entertainment purposes. An "application" or "application program" refers to virtually any type of program from spreadsheets such as Excel to media players such as iTunes. However, the term specifically excludes essential control software such as the operating system (see system software).

One or Many Files

An application can be made up of a single executable file or hundreds of files, which includes additional software modules, configuration files and ancillary data files. See application program and application software.

(2) A functional category such as payroll, inventory and billing, or a business category such as manufacturing, banking and retail.

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Appreciation (in appraisal terminology).

Short for ‘application program’, as opposed to a systems program. Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing developers to create for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would consider all those to be apps. (Broadly, an app is often a self-contained environment for performing some well-defined task such as ‘word processing’; hackers tend to prefer more general-purpose tools.) See killer app; oppose tool, operating system.