I hereby propose a new technical term for a type of application to software developers and power users.
Comrade
A comrade is an app (an app is a self-contained application usually for tablets or phones) that usually comes with the OS or is available from the OS vendor and acts as a calendar, address book or email program, i.e. one of the three that are now typically synced with a cloud.
Comrades are sometimes configurable and are often meant to sync only with the OS vendor’s own cloud.
![ios7 calendar](../_Media/ios7_calendar_med.jpeg)
The iOS calendar comrade
![calendar](../_Media/calendar_med.png)
Microsoft’s calendar comrade
![blackberry-10-contacts](../_Media/blackberry-10-contacts_med.jpeg)
BlackBerry’s Contacts and Calendar comrades (icons)
A comrade is also defined by its limitations. A comrade is really an app that was created just because it was needed. It doesn’t have any special features. Microsoft’s comrades on Windows 8 and Windows RT are typical comrades in that they basically don’t have any features. (In fact they don’t even work as intended.)
![comrades](../_Media/comrades_med.png)
Microsoft Outlook, which also does email and keeps an address book and calendar is not a comrade (too many features).
Apple’s email program Mail.app is also not a comrade (one of the defined purposes but has clearly been designed to be a good email program and not just a necessary one).
BlackBerry’s BlackBerry Hub is not a comrade, but BlackBerry 10’s Contacts and Calendar apps are.