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susanc's avatar

What does "native" mean in computerspeak?

Asked by susanc (16144points) July 23rd, 2008
3 responses
“Great Question” (1points)

berocky just asked kevbo if he doesn’t like a native facebook app. what.

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Answers

sndfreQ's avatar

Any program designed to function on the base operating system for a computer, rather than being embedded from within another program; they were referring to the recently released Facebook app that can run on its own, not through the Safari web browser on the iPhone (as you know the iTunes App Store was opened on July 11th, with several hundred “native” iPhone apps released).

Sometimes also referred to as a “Standalone” application as well. Also mentioned in the other discussion, this site (http://Fluther.com) has a mobile version (http://i.fluther.com), but still relies on the Safari browser to run, so it is not (yet) a native app.

sndfreQ (11739points)“Great Answer” (4points)
wildflower's avatar

Native means it was developed for that particular platform or system (like Mac OS X or iPhone), rather than updated or tweaked to be compatible with it. Basically: ‘designed for’, rather than ‘able to run on’.

wildflower (11172points)“Great Answer” (2points)
sndfreQ's avatar

Right wildflower! Also, a program that doesn’t need to run on emulation…example: running Windows XP on Mac OS X via virtualization software like Parallels.

sndfreQ (11739points)“Great Answer” (1points)

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