out-of-the-box

Question

Why Appian call the stuffs within Appian as out-of-the-box? out-of-the-box always sound something out of the Appian, isn't it?

Mike Schmitt · Answer

The "box" is a metaphorical reference to the retail "box" which software would normally be purchased in, at least in the past. 
 Think of a new copy of Windows XP. You buy it at the store, in a shiny shrink-wrapped box, then take it home and open it, to install it on a new (for instance) PC. Features which were available strictly from a clean install from the official installation CD, were features that are "available out of the box". 
 This is different than, say, "out side the box", which means something completely unrelated.

Dave Lewis · Answer

It comes from the days when software came to you in a box. A literal cardboard box. You'd open the box and there would be a booklet, or possibly several. It could have one CD, or lots of CDs. You picked the one marked "1", put that in your CD-ROM, and it went through an install wizard to install the software. You could have some optional extras, and you got those by taking the other CD-ROMs "out of the box" and also running those as part of the setup wizard. Whatever software you got without downloading it from someone else from the internet or writing it yourself is what came out of that box you purchased. 
 Sometimes you could buy expansions or upgrades, but those came in a different box, and so weren't considered out of THE box, the first one you purchased.

out-of-the-box

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