Imagine that the industry is a stack of pancakes, each representing a "layer" of technology: chips, hardware, operating systems, applications.
If one of you works in a corporate office, however, and therefore sits behind a firewall (a layer of hacker-proof hardware or software), much less data wriggles through.
A virtual instrument can be defined as: "A layer of software and/or hardware added to a general purpose computer in such a fashion that users are able to interact with the computer as though it were their own custom-designed traditional electronic instrument".
But there's also something more magical that this network-effect provides for Apple: by specifying that developers use Apple's tools, namely Xcode and LLVM, Apple gains a layer of control in how this hardware convergence plays out.
There comes the layer of hardware.
If that doesn't work, apply a layer of adhesive solvent, available at most hardware stores.
I.B.M. says the alliances added $700 million last year to sales of hardware, services, database programs and middleware (a layer of software that links and manages large portfolios of software or diverse computer systems).
It is also a product that occupies strategic ground in computing, as a layer of code that resides between a computer's hardware and the operating system, usurping some tasks, and potentially undermining the importance of the operating system.
The plasticity potential is a layer of information revealing the functional selection, which can be imagined as 'invisible software', operating on the architectural design of the proteins, which can be imagined as the 'visible hardware'.
