lapply
is probably a better choice than apply
here, as apply first coerces your data.frame to an array which means all the columns must have the same type. Depending on your context, this could have unintended consequences.
The pattern is:
df[cols] <- lapply(df[cols], FUN)
The 'cols' vector can be variable names or indices. I prefer to use names whenever possible (it's robust to column reordering). So in your case this might be:
wifi[4:9] <- lapply(wifi[4:9], A)
An example of using column names:
wifi <- data.frame(A=1:4, B=runif(4), C=5:8)
wifi[c("B", "C")] <- lapply(wifi[c("B", "C")], function(x) -1 * x)