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Broadly, the combination of an
operating system and a processor to form a system on which application
programs can run. Nowadays, the term is often used to refer just to the
operating system, an assumption having been made that the processor in
question is made by Intel. Historically, different versions of the same
computer program have often been written to run on different platforms,
creating big headaches for software developers in the process. Early version
of netscape navigator, for example, ran on around 20 different
platforms, although that number has shrunk as the program's popularity has
declined. The Java language promised to bring platform independence to the
software world but has met with limited success to date. |
