APA and American "IPA" have evolved in the past 6-7 years to become one and the same. Or perhaps we should just assign shilling ratings to them to designate the low gravity ones from the high gravity, ala Scottish ales. Or how about X, XX, XXX, XXXX. Heck, we've already invented the Double IPA / Imperial IPA. Why not just rename them all to APA X, XX, XXX, XXXX. Hey, okay, I think I've got it!! Just call it an APA w/ X IBUs. In other words, just name the beer with the number of IBUs it's got. Me: "You've got to try this 60 IBU APA." Another guy: "Don't be such a wuss. My 5000 IBU APA blows yours out of the sky!"
Don't we already do this anyway? Except we call it IPA instead of APA.
Or I guess we could just go the route of MTV, where the M officially doesn't stand for anything anymore. Kind of like Ulysses S Grant. What's the S stand for? Exactly. IPA? Yeah, that's just the name of the style. It doesn't stand for anything, other than really hoppy ale.