"WiFi" is a made up word for the standards that wireless internet communications must meet. All it really means to you & me is that your device communicates with the internet via radio waves rather than over a physical cable. "App" is short for Application. Is is synonymous with "program." Word processing software is an application. Spreadsheet software is an application. On your Smartphone, mapping software is an app. You calendar scheduling software is an app. I installed the Walmart "app," which is software that allows me to look up pricing, location, inventory, etc in my local store. Android is the name of one of the operation systems installed on non-Apple smartphones and other mobile devices such as tablets (just as Windows is the name of the operating system installed on your non-Apple computer.) The Cloud generally refers to off-site storage that you and I access via the internet. This is different than local storage we use, like the hard drive in your computer and the memory in your smartphone. It is called "cloud" because network diagrams have long used a cloud as the symbol for such storage, per the example below:
Your modem can do either connected/wired or non-wired, and non-wired is what Wifi is, @Hal Pollner . We do not have anything directly connected to our modem, but we can connect from anywhere in the house (and some places in the yard) through the Wifi . It transmits more like a CB radio does, as opposed to a landline phone, which has to be connected. If you have an antenna on your modem, then it can send Wifi to your phone. Android is a type of phone, just like Ford is a type of car. Cloud storage, is like being able to store your information on a large server instead of trying to overload your phone’s capability. It is very safe, because you never lose what is stored there. When I had a desktop, and it crashed, all of my pictures and documents were usually lost. Now, I have all 2700+ photos stored in the cloud, and not on my iPad. I can access the photos with my iPad or my phone, from anywhere in the world, and instantly receive/send photos to other people that I want to share the picture with. An app is just a simple way of doing something with your phone. As an example, I have the Walmart shopping app on my phone and my ipad; so I can just open the app and shop, rather than having to type in a web address, like www.walmart.com, like you have to do with a regular computer . I think that your Dell XPS has some apps, you may or may not be using them. They are like a shortcut to the website.
This phone should look similar to yours, and each choice is like an app. You choose phone, and it opens the phone app. Choose Internet, and you can surf the net, etc. An app is just an easy way to get to something, so they are called applications, or apps , for short.
When you get settled in at Solstice A L one of their tech people can help you with any computer or smart phone questions.
My Modem has an antenna. It also has a coax cable going somewhere. It also has a jack labeled LAN with a cable in it. Now, what do I have? I'll need time to digest your explanations or WiFi, Android, and Cloud. (I'll need another Rum & Coke...)
@Hal Pollner , A L is just the initials for Assisted Living, so he was saying that once you have moved to your new apartment, there should be people to answer any tech questions, and help you get everything set up and connected and working. The sentence was lacking punctuation, or it would have made more sense.
"WiFi" and "LAN" refer to the method of the final communications link between the internet hardware we have and our devices. There are lots of ways the internet gets into our homes, just as there are lots of ways a television signal gets into our homes: -Satellite -Cable -Fiber All of those enter our homes and tie into a coding/decoding device (your modem or router) that is the interface between our computers/smartphones and the incoming/outgoing signal. They function as a cable box might, also acting as a signal splitter that serves multiple computers, phones, televisions, etc. That coax cable you mentioned exits your house and goes to your internet provider...there are various signal boosters between your home and their equipment, not unlike a physical phone land line. The modem/router in your home communicates with your devices both wirelessly (WiFi) and via physical cable (LAN, or Local Area Network.) If you have an old style desktop computer that does not have WiFi (wireless) capability, you plug in the LAN cable to get internet access, as we all did in the days before WiFi. As Lon said, once you get into your new digs, someone else will worry about all the gizmos that makes it happen. But curiosity is a good thing.
I have DIRECTV sattelite service entering my set from an external antenna looking at the sky. I have a fiber cable entering my house through the wall and into a Verizon box on the inside. I have a modem with an antenna and a coax cable and a yellow cable that connects to my computer. I have this, but I don't know what I have. I also looked up "streaming" and now understand it less than before. Hal
You should just use the stuff to do what you want without worrying about the technology, just as you watch tv without understanding RGB and choke coils and pixels. Then once you have a frame of reference, maybe worry about the technojargon...but there's really no point in it.
That’s okay Hal. Understanding all that is kinda like going through life. People can talk you through life, walk you through it and even explain all the things along the way but we still have a figure out a majority of it on our own. K.I.S.S. Keep it simple saint.
@Hal Pollner Here’s an attempt to explain. In the days before internet was available to everyone if you wanted to watch something on TV, say an episode of Dallas and knew you wouldn’t be home then you put a tape in your VCR recorder and recorded it to view later. Today if you want to watch an episode of say The Handmaid’s Tale instead of recording it on a VCR you would stream it. To do this you go to the TV channel’s website and do a search for the series and episode you want to watch. Once you find it you press the play button and watch the episode without recording it. You can pause, rewind and fast forward just as you did with the VCR. The big difference is that you aren’t recording the program but watching it ”live”. Here in Sweden many series are released en bloc which allows you to binge watch a whole series instead of one episode per week. It’s possible to stream TV series, movies, music, concerts and much more. There are also ways of connecting your smartphone to your TV so you can watch whatever it is you stream on the bigger screen. But more of that later. Hope that explains it for you.
If you have DIRECTV , and have Netflix, Youtube, or any other kind of channel where you can choose from a list of movies/videos, and watch it when you want to (as opposed to live TV, where everything has a specified time it comes on), then you were streaming that movie. I do not think that your smartphone has that capability to have apps like Netflix, although with the internet button, you should be able to go to Youtube and stream videos from there just like you have been doing from home on your desktop computer.