Resurgence of apps makes a lot of sense, as the personal machines (computers, mobile phones, pods and pads) become more powerful and the bandwidth increases and becomes ubiquitous.<p>Browser-based remote apps make sense in a slow-network environment, such as the Internet of dialups; but today everyone has a potential server in their hands.
Hmm back in the day, an "app" was native software on Mac OS X, and these days I still call "Safari.app" an app. It does have a ".app" extension, after all. I think this is the definition that was the predecessor to "native software that typically runs on a smartphone, and most commonly the iPhone."