One afternoon at the community center, Ryan decides he wants to re-watch the Season 1 finale of Finding Alyssa. He wants to be sure he didn’t miss anything important before he watches the Season 2 premiere.
Using the chat app on the computer, Ryan chats Antonio to see if he can use his Streaming Plus username and password. Antonio says, “Sure,” and proceeds to chat Ryan his information.
Launching an App
Here you can explore more about apps.
When you use your iPhone you move fluidly between different activities, from texting to web browsing to social media to photography. These separate experiences are all enabled by a complex computer system.
Each time you take your iPhone from your pocket, unlock it, and open an app, you’re bringing an entire system to your fingers. Your phone is a computing device—it’s a physical object that can run programs. It often relies on a whole ecosystem of other computing devices.
The word app is common today, but it’s a relatively new term. A much older and more general word for code that runs on a computer is software. (The complementary term hardware refers to a physical machine that can run code—in this case, an iPhone.)
Program is another term that also refers to a collection of code that performs a specific task. The term app itself is derived from the word application, another computing term that has existed for a long time. Application software is a category of software that helps users perform a related set of tasks.
The words software, program, and application are still used, but nowadays app is typically used to refer to a package of software that people install on their phones and other computers, access with a tap or a click, and use to accomplish particular tasks.
Unfortunately, Streaming Plus says the account information is incomplete. Before Ryan can proceed, Antonio must update his profile. Ryan texts Antonio to let him know.
Antonio makes those updates on his phone. Ryan is now able to log into Antonio's Streaming Plus account and starts to rewatch Season 1.
More on the Internet
Explore and learn more about how the internet enables you to connect to the world.
Much of what you see on your phone arrives via the internet—a computing innovation originating in the 1960s. The internet is another example of a computing system. The purpose of the internet is to enable any computer in the world to connect to any other computer, without having to know how that connection operates.
The internet, like any computer network, comprises many individual computing devices—computers, routers, switches, and more—and the software that enables it to function. Networks enable their connected devices to exchange data using wired or wireless links. Most networks don’t connect all their component devices directly; they route messages through multiple links to move information from a sender to a recipient.
