為何用『殺手』 Killer 形容『應用程式』 Application 呢？一段維基百科詞條文字或許足以釋疑解惑︰

Killer application

In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, a programming language, software platform, or an operating system.^[1] In other words, consumers would buy the (usually expensive) hardware just to run that application. A killer app can substantially increase sales of the platform on which it runs.^[2][3]

Examples

One of the first recognized examples of a killer application is generally agreed to be the VisiCalc spreadsheet for the Apple II series.^[4] Because it was not available on other computers for 12 months, people spent ＄100 for the software first, then ＄2,000 to ＄10,000 on the Apple computer they needed to run it.^[5] BYTE wrote in 1980, “VisiCalc is the first program available on a microcomputer that has been responsible for sales of entire systems”,^[6] while Creative Computing‘s VisiCalc review was subtitled “reason enough for owning a computer”.^[7] Others also chose to develop software, such as EasyWriter, for the Apple II first because of its higher sales, helping Apple defeat rivals Commodore International and Tandy Corporation.^[5]

Lotus 1-2-3 similarly benefited sales of the IBM PC and compatibles, just as VisiCalc did for Apple sales. Noting that computer purchasers did not want PC compatibility as much as compatibility with certain PC software, InfoWorld suggested “let’s tell it like it is. Let’s not say ‘PC compatible,’ or even ‘MS-DOS compatible.’ Instead, let’s say ‘1-2-3 compatible.'”^[5][8] Another killer app is WordStar, the most popular word processor during much of the 1980s.^[9] Once the Internet became more widely available to consumers, email was seen as a killer app that drove people to purchase computers, even though email is a genre of applications rather than a single “app.”

The UNIX Operating System served as a killer application for the DEC PDP-11 minicomputer and VAX-11 minicomputer during roughly 1975—1985 (when Sun Microsystems and Encore Computer became competitive.) Many of the PDP-11 and VAX-11 processors never ran DEC’s operating systems (RSTS or VAX/VMS), but instead, they ran UNIX, which was first licensed in 1975. To get a virtual-memory UNIX (BSD 3.0) you had to purchase a VAX-11 computer. Many universities wanted a general-purpose timesharing system that would meet the needs of students and researchers (early versions of UNIX included free compilers for C, Fortran, and Pascal; at the time, offering even one free compiler was unprecedented.) From its inception UNIX could drive high-quality typesetting equipment and later Postscript printers using the nroff/troff typesetting language, and this was also unprecedented for its time. UNIX was the first operating system offered in source-license form (a university license cost only $10,000, less than 1 PDP-11), allowing it to run on an unlimited number of machines, and allowing the machines to interface to any type of hardware because the UNIX I/O system was extensible.

Usage

The first recorded use of the term in print was 1987, in PC Week 8 Sept. 107/2. “Everybody has only one killer application. The secretary has a word processor. The manager has a spreadsheet.”^[10]

The definition of “killer app” came up during Bill Gates’s questioning in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust suit. Bill Gates had written an email in which he described Internet Explorer as a killer app. In the questioning, he said that the term meant “a popular application”, and did not connote an application that would fuel sales of a larger product or one that would supplant its competition, as the Microsoft Computer Dictionary defined it.^[11]

 

樹莓派已有鳳初鳴耶！

Introducing PIXEL

New applications

There are a couple of new applications now included in the image.

RealVNC have ported their VNC server and viewer applications to Pi, and they are now integrated with the system. To enable the server, select the option on the Interfaces tab in Raspberry Pi Configuration; you’ll see the VNC menu appear on the taskbar, and you can then log in to your Pi and control it remotely from a VNC viewer.

The RealVNC viewer is also included – you can find it from the Internet section of the Applications menu – and it allows you to control other RealVNC clients, including other Pis. Have a look here on RealVNC’s site for more information.

 

Please note that if you already use xrdp to remotely access your Pi, this conflicts with the RealVNC server, so you shouldn’t install both at once. If you’re updating an existing image, don’t run the sudo apt-get install realvnc-vnc-server line in the instructions below. If you want to use xrdp on a clean image, first uninstall the RealVNC server with sudo apt-get purge realvnc-vnc-server before installing xrdp. (If the above paragraph means nothing to you, then you probably aren’t using xrdp, so you don’t have to worry about any of it!)

Also included is the new SenseHAT emulator, which was described in a blog post a couple of weeks ago; have a look here for all the details.

 

Updates

There are updates for a number of the built-in applications; these are mostly tweaks and bug fixes, but there have been improvements made to Scratch and Node-RED.

One more thing…

We’ve been shipping the Epiphany web browser for the last couple of years, but it’s now starting to show its age. So for this release (and with many thanks to Gustav Hansen from the forums for his invaluable help with this), we’re including an initial release of Chromium for the Pi. This uses the Pi’s hardware to accelerate playback of streaming video content.

 

We’ve preinstalled a couple of extensions; the uBlock Origin adblocker should hopefully keep intrusive adverts from slowing down your browsing experience, and the h264ify extension forces YouTube to serve videos in a format which can be accelerated by the Pi’s hardware.

Chromium is a much more demanding piece of software than Epiphany, but it runs well on Pi 2 and Pi 3; it can struggle slightly on the Pi 1 and Pi Zero, but it’s still usable. (Epiphany is still installed in case you find it useful; launch it from the command line by typing “epiphany-browser”.)