The most retro app I still use on a daily basis would have to be "vim". Otherwise, I used to love WinAMP, CuteFTP, and ACDSee on Windows 9x. None of which I use anymore, but they are still installed on my retro rig.

Mainstays from the DOS days:

TheDraw/AcidDraw, PC Tools, CPBackup, Autodesk Animator, VPIC, QPEG, E3 text editor, QText, EinsteinWriter, Scream Tracker 2/3, Impulse Tracker, Blaster Master 16, TeleMate, Terminate, BlueWave, DESQview...

laxdragon wrote:

ACDSee

ACDSee 2.x and 3.0 has the fastest image scrolling and zooming. Modern image viewers are no longer coded with efficiency in mind since PCs are fast enough anyway. Perfect for 100-400 MHz PCs. I can pick and drag a loaded image and still follow it smoothly on such a weak system. IrfanView fails.

Sound Forge 4.5. Still works, the UI layout is more logical and Windows-like compared to CoolEdit.
DOS Navigator 1.51. For some reason it's floppy formatter, forced with sector optimization, makes readable floppies when the windows one fails on the same drive. The technical reason for this is unknown to me.
Cakewalk Pro Audio. A MIDI editor.
SEA. Image viewer for DOS with support for high resolution video modes.

I did call the directory where I installed application software (excluding games) on my Win98 PC "APPS", shortened from "Application", which is what the OS calls EXE files, to fit 8 characters. (that was around 2000-2002, well before cellphone apps.) Nothing I manually install goes into "Program Files". Now the word has such negative connotation that I named the directory "BIN" after reinstallation of the OS.

in DOS I use all the time LIST, Necromancer's DOS Navigator, ems/xmsdsk, mfplay, pkzip, mTCP (not so retro but yeah) and ofcourse the cd-emulation programs fakecd/fakedr so I don't have to mess with disks...

I used to use glue.exe and shred.exe. they were disk spanning (dos) utilities so that you could copy single files larger than 1.44mb (or any other standard floppy format size) on to multiple floppies. Worked very well and very reliably.

(re: "apps") Hehe, I just remembered something... maybe the FIRST usage of that term for PC programs <grin>???

Back in the day (1988-1990 or so) I used a DOS menu program called "Point & Shoot" by "Varteck, Inc." -> download/file.php?id=9119 / http://www.danielsays.com/ss-gallery-dos-poin … -shoot-309.html .

When initially doing a fresh install of P&S, the installer would search your hard drive for programs that it recognized, and then create a simple pre-made menu for you of them.

Quite a few of the programs that it found (such as DOS Edit) it would place in a submenu called "Applications" 🤣! 😀

(P.S. Note that the pics in the above links (and attached) were NOT from the afore-said fresh install of P&S.)

I think Phil is curious about the abbreviated use, like in this old email or old manual.
[OBLIGATORY LINK WARNING: COARSE LANGUAGE]
http://www.textfiles.com/computers/mactricks.txt

I've seen them as 'appliances' too 😀

Awesome. These guys have some of my favorite retro apps then.
http://www.automaticwasher.org/

Mathcad 14. It does work under Windows 7 though 😀

Definitely Norton Commander as well as VGA Copy, simcga, PC Tools, PKZIP, ARJ.. what else? 😀

Oh man, I just remembered one that I had forgotten... "View Pic" (VPIC.EXE) by Bob Montgomery 😀

When I viewed pictures then it was CompuShow for me. CompuShow 2000 even animated gifs and displayed their comments. Never was a fan of their windows versions

Norton Commander
The original DOS version :3

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Photo Finish 3.0 (I don't like the changes made to version 4).

hands down, the best retro photo editor EVER and my favorite program in my first computer

combined with this

i had lots of fun with this in my 486 DX-2 66Mhz

Nero Burning Rom, back when all it did was burn CDs. They even had it for Win 3.1.

Living wrote:

combined with this […]
Show full quote

combined with this

i had lots of fun with this in my 486 DX-2 66Mhz

OH, MAN! I STILL have my Logitech handheld scanner that looks pretty much like that one! 😀 Came with it's own interface card, as well as scanning and OCR software for DOS to boot! 😀

squareguy wrote:

Nero Burning Rom, back when all it did was burn CDs. They even had it for Win 3.1.

I myself always HATED Nero Burning Rom... that is, until I HAD to use it because my old version of NTI CD Maker Pro would no longer support the newer CDROM drives that I had at the time. Hehe, I had even hacked/hexed the drivers and core files of NTI to support several of my CDROM drives, but could only do that for so long before it was totally unusable for the more modern ones.

That being said, all I use is Nero Burning Rom for most everything now 😀

Living wrote:

hands down, the best retro photo editor EVER and my favorite program in my first computer […]
Show full quote

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Photo Finish 3.0 (I don't like the changes made to version 4).

hands down, the best retro photo editor EVER and my favorite program in my first computer

combined with this

i had lots of fun with this in my 486 DX-2 66Mhz

Got my copy way back in 1995 from Egghead Software of all places. Had it running in my Pentium 100 with Windows 3.11/DOS 6.2. In 1996 I bought a Mustek Paragon MFS-12000SP SCSI scanner and started creating wallpapers like mad. Those were fun days indeed 😀

Graphics, Pictures, and Publishing
Micrografx Designer (poor man's CorelDraw, but even better IMHO)
Paint Shop Pro (poor man's Photoshop, well sorta..😁)
ACDSee
Sea Graphics Viewer (DOS iamge viewer)
QPEG-386 (DOS image viewer, VESA support)
PrintMaster and BannerMania (kind of a very basic publishing programs (banners, greeting cards, etc.)

Office:
PFS Professional Write Plus (DOS word processor)
Microsoft Word 2.0
Microsoft Excel 3.0
Recognita Select (OCR)
(Though, I also used Ami Pro and Quatro Pro, from time to time)

Engineering:
AutoCAD 12 (DOS and Windows 3.1)
Easyplot
Matlab 3.5 SE
Mathcad 6
Lahey FORTRAN
QuickBasic

Utilities:
Stacker
Colorado Backup
QEMM
Norton Utilities
Checkit Pro
PCTools
DiskCopyFast
F-Prot
Ontrack Disk Manager

And the Oscar goes tooooo..... Norton Commander!!!!....
(the best tiny little piece of software ever developed)

That word again.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-29684205

Fire crews are battling a major blaze at Didcot B Power Station, Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue has said. Twenty fire appliances are at the scene, which broke out in one of the cooling towers.

That's a new usage to me. Is it common in the UK, or is this just officialdom/newspeak? I wonder how long before they call them "apps", or if some do already.

For the curious, what we'd say on this side of the ocean is "twenty units are at the scene."