DiogeneX

A quick look at Google Trends for the word “app” shows that it was little used before 2008.

While the launch of Apple’s App Store in 2008 (with iPhone OS 2.0) brought the term into public consciousness, the idea of “app” is not just the word application, truncated. Instead “apps” represent the confluence of several trends in the making:

• Computers (broadly defined to include phones and tablets) becoming ubiquitous and leisure devices.
• Multi-touch interfaces removing the intimidating element of input indirection from computers.
• Online music stores, oriented to selling individual music tracks at low cost, legitimized (in the eyes of content owners) and took the fear out of online purchases (in the eyes of consumers).
• The Internet.

The emergence of pop culture followed a similar pattern of convergence of interests across creatives, distributors and consumers (“45 RPM: The History, Heroes, and Villains of a Pop Music Revolution”). Unsurprisingly, the result was a Pre-Cambrian explosion of content matched only by a fervor among consumers to buy that content.

“Apps” are the merger of popular culture and computing.