portability?

A while back, I read slashdot's interview with Chuck Moore.
  http://slashdot.org/developers/01/09/11/139249.shtml

As far as Chuck is concerned, I am not worthy.  But he said something
that caught my eye.  "I'm not interested in recoding C applications. My
experience indicates that most applications are hardware-dependent."
What does he mean?  That solutions to problems tend to involve specific
hardware, and that portability is over-rated?

Just some random chatter..

Ben