Remember when Best Buy had 6 isles of computer programs for sale?
An app is a little different than a program. IMHO. Many apps are free, most programs are fee based. Most apps have advertising and secret snooping about our personal habits. Don't think programs used to do so much data mining as apps do today.
I prefer to run Linux as the operating system on this 17" Acer laptop. Specifically, I use Kubuntu 14.04. It is free. ALL of the 70,000+ apps in the vetted repository (notice I used the word apps to refer to software) are FREE. Only the walled gardens that surround Windows and Apple operating systems use "license" fees to allow access to or use of programs. In Linux, not only are the apps free, but the GPL (General Public License) guarantees that a user of an app can have a copy of the source code that was compiled to produce the app, with the full rights to modify it and pass the modifications along. My desktop is KDE 4.13.2, a desktop so powerful and easy to use that it is something that Windows and Mac always wanted to be, because they both borrowed heavily from it. Indeed, the installation sequence (and look&feel) if the Win7 installation is almost a carbon copy of Kubuntu's look&feel, which has been around long before Win7 appeared.
As GPL licensed programs there are no intrusive ads or snooping on Kubuntu, and Linux in general. I have been using Linux since May of 1998 and I have yet to see an ad pop up on any version I ran, except the two or three commercial version of Linux I tried in the distant past, which are no longer offered and which I abandon because they offered no advantages over the open source versions.
Apps tend to rely on processor power through a data link, and not usually done in your device. Most programs tend to do projects in house.
That Apple or Android connects to a remote server via 3D wireless (or Internet) and passes your request to it for parsing on its more powerful system is not characteristic of small form factor programs. What you think is new has been around for decades as a "client-server" relationship. I wrote software for the state of Nebraska which allowed remote offices around the state to connect via the Internet (and later wirelessly) to my main program running on in-house servers which also connected to databases on the back end. All the out-state agents were running was the client, a GUI which presented the user with menu options, buttons, textboxs, dropdown combos, etc..., that set up a SQL (Standard Query Language) command which was passed over the Internet to the server, which executed the SQL query and then set the result set of record(s) back to the client for display or editing. The database that contained the records was too big to fit on a remote laptop or smaller form factor. A laptop or desktop can do the same. Indeed, the apps that run on your smartphone can run on the laptop was well, or has laptop version which can. The only difference is the allowances in the app that are made for the form factor the app is running on. Ubuntu, for example, has the Unity interface, which detects which form factor the GUI is running on and presents the appropriate form factor interface. Mac OS X does the same. Windows tried but its offerings have been rejected by the market place and is at less than 6% market share and falling. Microsoft announced the abandonment of Surface Mini yesterday, just a few days after it announced the layoff of around 18,000 employees.
Are apps and programs the same thing? Maybe.
They definitely are. They begin life as source code created by a developer whose edits the source code using software called an "editor". After editing, the developer uses software called a "compiler", which produces one or more machine language files called "object" files. The object files are linked together to form a binary executable by software called a "linker". Sometimes, the compiler and linker are combined into one program, which produces the binary executable directly. The binary program in Windows is signified by an extension of "somename.exe" where "exe" stands for "executable". Before Windows became a 32bit operating system its executable extension was "com", short for "command", because before the advent of graphical user interface desktops computer uses issued commands using a console based interface, often called a terminal. Besides com's and exe's a text file containing a sequence of terminal commands, called a "batch" file, has an extension of "bat". Bill Gate's operating system has a defect. A file can have more than one extension: someprogram.exe.jpg. When using a terminal or a file manager Windows parses right to left and only shows the name and the last extension, so someprogram.exe.jpg appears as someprogram.jpg. However, when a command to execute it is given the operating system parses the name from left to right and sees someprogram.exe. So what the user "thought" was a graphic jpg file is actually a binary executable. Since Windows, because of what are called dynamic linked libraries (.dll) that create an ActiveX control, can execute an executable that exists in memory and not on the hard disk, Windows can execute binaries that are attached as "graphical" files to emails.
In Linux there are no extensions. An email attachment can be executed
1) ONLY if it is present on the disk, and
2) ONLY if it is of the type ELF (Executable Linux File) or a special bash script (.sh) and
3) ONLY if the file's as the execute permission bit set.
The user MUST save the attachment to the hard disk. The user MUST set the execute permission bit. The user MUST give the command to execute.
That's why hackers can generate bot farms containing MILLIONS of Windows systems within hours or a few days of sending out a single infected email. Mac, on the other hand, was based on a Linux variant called FreeBSD, which led to Darwin, from which Apple exploited a lot of free labor from FOSS developers, before stealing Konqueror (KDE's browser), renaming it Safari, and releasing their first Unix based computer. Being Unix based, as is Linux and BSD, it has security paradigms built in from the ground up, present in the separation of users domains from admin ("root") domains, and using fine grained file based permission bits. You don't hear of giant Apple Mac bot farms. For the same reason, you don't hear of Linux bot farms either. Linux runs about 80% of all Internet servers and Windows runs around 15-17%, but essentially ALL of the millions of viruses, Trojans and malware comes from those Windows servers.
My wife went to a funeral out of state, drove herself. I could watch, in real time, as she drove along the Interstate. I could talk to her via walke talke app in her phone (free), without her answering the phone. Turn in three blocks (she gets lost sometimes) I never had programs help out in such ways.
I can open up a free app that tells me where all the convicted sexual predators live in my neighborhood. I don't think Best Buy had that program.
I always track my children and relatives from my laptop when they take trips using airlines. When they drive I can communicate to them via several programs available (Mumble is a good one) and track their map location if their smartphone is set to allow such tracking. All that is needed is an Internet connection, regardless of the form factor of the device.
Best Buy would not offer a program to track sexual predators because there is no profit in doing so. Such information IS available to desktops and laptops because the source of such information is the Internet, and an HTML server offering such information doesn't care about the device which made the connection. Here is one of DOZENS of offerings of such information for my zip code:
http://www.familysafetyclub.com/dashboard/monitoring_report?aff=jeru14&tid=NE&zip_code=68516Where does the "familysafetyclub" get such information? From the source:
https://sor.nebraska.gov/Registrya Nebraska government website. A similar search of my area found the ones listed by "familysafetyclub" and several more that they missed.
https://sor.nebraska.gov/Registry/Search?LocationStreet=3821+Eagle+Ridge+Road&LocationCity=Lincoln&LocationZipCode=68516&Radius=2&SearchType=LocationIn checking that list of predators scattered around the map I noticed on that is two houses away from where my daughter lives. I just emailed her that location .... from my laptop, with nothing more than FireFox as a browser and gmail as my email client.
