What’s under the hood of new Apps development for SharePoint 2013 Online?

So what’s inside this well-advertised approach? Actually, in terms of web development nothing new. It’s a web widget that:
• Can be any of your web applications hosted in Azure, IIS, Apache etc.
• Can be the same as above but hosted within an iframe embedded to a SharePoint page (App Part)
• Can be an html code block with JavaScript and CSS being executed in user browser

In addition, Microsoft renamed some of its existing functional pieces like list, libraries, application pages etc. to Apps which obviously confuse developers at start.

I think the most useful change for developers is a new extended REST/OData service and Client-Side Object Model which enable external code in the Apps to interact directly with SharePoint artifacts.
Another beneficial change is that SharePoint 2013 supports OAuth authentication which means that an App can interact with SharePoint on behalf of users once they have logged in and authorized the App.
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