Out of Cheese

Tim O’Reilly provides an interesting definition of “productivity application”, originally from Doug Carlston of Broderbund Software.

We tend to think of “productivity” applications as Office-type apps — things that you use when you’re not having fun. Carlston gave a better definition a few years ago, calling them “any application where the user’s own data matters more to [the user] than the data we provide.”

O’Reilly uses this to declare Apple’s iApps — iTunes, iPhoto, and others — to be productivity applications. It sounds odd at first, but when you think about it more, he’s right. It’s a new use of the term but it really does fit, and it shows that Apple is finding new ways to make people productive with their computers.