I think this is the answer, and I think it would have made sense if they'd called it a "device specific password" instead of an "application specific password".

I've got an asp (dsp?) for my phone (which all the applications that need one on my phone use), another for my iPad, another for each of my laptops, home computers, and my work computer. If I lose (or have stolen) my phone, I can revoke the password it knows - without needing to change any of my other devices.

Using the word "Application" allows everybody (including, I think, google's own security people) to make the incorrect assumption that the "iPhone mail password" is "specific" to mail - and only allows POP and IMAP to work. Instead, what "application" means is not the easily assumed "a piece of software" interpretation, but the "use to which something is put" interpretation. The decision and management of that "use to which a password is put" is not made nor emforced by Google, but is all up to _me_ (or, as it turned out, to any attacker who could lever one out of me).

Right. AFAICT, there's nothing inherently "specific" about the password at all, that name is mostly just a "serving suggesion" to the legitimate user (one which the attacker is free to ignore).

So calling it a "device specific password" doesn't make it any more sensible to me. I'd call it an "alternate weakest-link redundant password" to be precise, but Marketing rarely goes with my suggestions. :-)

Google does intentionally make it a little more difficult to do what you are doing by refusing to ever show you the password again once it has been generated. You have to store that "unmemorizable" sixteen letter password somewhere.

The workflow they seem to encourage is that an "application" asks for your password, you open a browser and generate a new ASP, then save it in that app and forget it forever.

By "application" they mean "something that asks for your password." Thunderbird or iChat, not IMAP or XMPP.