August 7, 2011 10:02 pm EDT

Switched On: When apps meet traps

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

They've gone by many names -- "programs," "executables" and "applications" -- and the development of technologies such as HTML5 calls their nature into question. But the explosion of apps that have set the mobile device market alight over the past several years have been around for almost as long as digital computing has. Disagree with that statement whilst chatting with those who took early programming classes, and you may be staring down a punch card to the face.

In terms of consumer technology, though, apps have migrated from PCs to video game consoles (where they've been long burnt into ROMs) to smartphones and tablets, and now -- perhaps -- back to televisions proper. One thing we've learned over the course of that history is that companies will rarely refuse an opportunity to turn a successful "purpose-built device" into an app platform given enough marketplace success.

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Switched On: When apps meet traps originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Aug 2011 18:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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