Okay, so it's a pretty big kid, but it still has some growing up to do. If you've been programming Java since its birth, you've already been through some growing pains with it. End users don't care what language a program is written in. You can s ee attempts at this with Corel Office for Java. End users don't care if a program is platform independent.
Most people use just one computer.
They couldn't care less whether a program runs on other computers, as long as it runs on theirs. While end users may not care about platform independence, network administrators managing multiple platforms often do. Since they are frequently the ones to decide what gets purchased, Java may gain a foothold on many networks regardless of user desire. After several years of porting software from one platform to another at my company, platform independence sure looks good. It's a worthy goal and one we should keep striving for.