#java got apps and applets too and sun was the goat

[pleasestopthese]

mac classic, next and osx were calling them apps before ios and android had ever seen a public

they're packages, not just the program binary. you can open them up and see everything. it's a different paradigm from DOS-informed windows, and from the usual POSIX userspace.

i'm forty in a few months, this paradigm is old as me. surely we can understand "these are various applications of this system's capabilities." surely we can understand a package is not just a program, nor a script, but may contain both and more. surely we can understand mac classic was a very flexible system, as was next, which is literally all of the apple operating systems now.

apps isn't what's restricting your phone, and it's not restricting your computer, either. and there are systems that are not windows and are not PC-DOS derivatives, each with their own paradigms you'd know a hell of a lot more about if not for microsoft strongarming the competition out of existence.

anyway these are applications of your system's capabilities. use them, see them as examples and see if you can come up with new ones.

next, be, haiku and the apple ecosystem are all the children of mac classic. along with apps we get automation – a visual scripting language chaining actions across apps on a file, which can be called repeatedly from a menu. we get droplets – specifically described processes from a single app that can be carried out on a file, like say you want a specific kind of compression with a specific setting ready to carry out on files as they're made; now rather than opening the whole thing up, you drag and drop the droplet over the file and it does what you wanted, using minimum resources and minimum time. and we get to use bash scripts because POSIX, these aren't presented as anything but scripts; you can perform any actions you want on any files you want, using any process with hooks.

first computer i ever touched was an apple ][, not long after was a macintosh, most my life in computers has been away from windows, using either linux, a bsd (including osx) or haiku.

not to enforce gender roles but a computer should NOT fucking have apps okay. if I wanted an app I'd go on my phone my laptop is for Programs. I mean this.