All of these technologies would be useless without software to bring them together. Software is the name for computer programs – lists of instructions – which tell the computer hardware how to perform a task. On mobile devices, there are two main pieces of software:
An operating system (OS) is a set of programs that a computer runs all the time it is switched on.
An OS performs many tasks, but we can think of it as the program that gets the computer ‘up and running’ and makes it work and look the way it does.
The OS sits between apps and the computer’s hardware, letting apps access the hardware. This is why it is possible to run software written for an OS, such as Microsoft Windows, on a wide variety of different computers.
Examples of operating systems on desktop computers include Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, and Linux. At the time of writing, the most common OS on mobile devices is Android from Google.
Once your computer or smartphone has started up, you will want to do some tasks with it. Don’t worry – no matter what you want to do, there’s almost certainly an app for it!
The word ‘app’ is short for application. An application is a computer program that enables the computer to do a useful job.
In most cases, you will see that a mobile device app has fewer features than a desktop application. This is usually reflected in the price, with many apps being free or costing less than a dollar.
For over twenty years, the desktop metaphor as exemplified by Mac OS and Windows operating systems formed the basis of most users’ experience of computing. The resultant applications became the mainstay of the information and communications technology (ICT) curriculum and informed much of what was taught.
Today’s learners have a different experience of Computing: it is on-line, social, and increasingly mobile. Computing devices have become more tactile and personal, the result of convergence of numerous technologies from multi-touch to motion-sensing and GPS.
In this camp, we will introduce you to some of the concepts in Computer Science via the development of an Android app.