Indeed but what you’re describing there is just more examples of metonymies like I’d already discussed in my previous post.
Microsoft obviously need a descriptive term (“software” and “program” does not work as a drop in replacement in all instances) and “application” is well suited. But that doesn’t mean that APIs (“application programming interface”) can’t be used by systems software, for example. It’s just “application” is a broad enough term to be the clearest term in most instances.
I should add, we are talking about the Win 3.x and possible very early 9x era. As time went on “application” did lose its specificity. An example of this is how progman.exe grouped software vs how the Start menu group software.
You originally wrote that applications were a subset of programs and this changed because of iPhone, which as i wrote is wrong since the term "application" was used to refer to programs way before iPhone even existed - using Windows 3.1 as an example of something from 1990 that used that term. With the quote i was referring to the use of the term "application" not the "API". The SDK help file uses the term "application" everywhere to describe software for Windows without making any distinction like the one you wrote in that message above.
Now, the term "application" might have had a more specific meaning before Windows existed (even Windows 1 seem to use the term application) but this is going back decades before iPhone was introduced.
> You originally wrote that applications were a subset of programs and this changed because of iPhone
You’re right I did. Agh truth be told I don’t know when the shift happened (it all feels like ancient history these days) but I do remember people making a distinction between applications, utilities, games and systems software, which they don’t now. I even remember teaching material making that distinction (old enough to have been in Uni when GUI applications were just shifting away from novelty).
Also you keep saying that I’m missing your point about APIs but I’m not. My point is that Windows documentation isn’t a legal document and thus using the term “application” for stuff that could mean any software is perfectly valid. Even now many make a distinction between systems software and applications yet the contents in most of the reference material applies just as much to systems software as it does application software. This is what is meant by metonymic purposes of the term.
I mentioned the Windows documentation not as an authoritative source for what "application" means, but more as an informal source for how people even in the 80s used "application" to mean any sort of software.
I mentioned Windows because it is the most likely to be known, but it also applies to other systems. For example the GEM installation manual[0] uses the term "application" to refer to non-system software and even seems to make the distinction between applications and programs where applications is the whole and program is a part of the application (notice in section 4 where it mentions that to install an application you use its installation program).
I did read the link, but i'm not sure how to interpret it, it just mentions that the word application can have several uses. Which, ok it does, but it doesn't sound like it was contradicting anything i wrote about "applications" not being just about specific types of software like productivity or even a subset of "programs" (the GEM manual even shows how it was used in the opposite where an application can be made up of multiple programs).
Microsoft obviously need a descriptive term (“software” and “program” does not work as a drop in replacement in all instances) and “application” is well suited. But that doesn’t mean that APIs (“application programming interface”) can’t be used by systems software, for example. It’s just “application” is a broad enough term to be the clearest term in most instances.
I should add, we are talking about the Win 3.x and possible very early 9x era. As time went on “application” did lose its specificity. An example of this is how progman.exe grouped software vs how the Start menu group software.