While I have seen this definition used in some very specific circumstances (like high frequency trading where they can afford to hire people to actually write a fully customized app for the hardware), this definition is so specific as to be essentially useless as it would apply to virtually nobody.
Typical IT usage means something is running on an OS that’s installed on the hardware, as opposed to in a virtual machine.
I have never seen "bare metal" used to mean anything other than running directly on the hardware instead of through an OS, so I guess the term simply means different things in different communities. The group of people who understand "bare metal" to mean what I mean by it is much larger than "virtually nobody".
Based on other comments here, it appears this is not as clear as I thought. I can see it being used either way, but definitely understand that in the “pre-virtual-machine” era, it could be used this way.
Typical IT usage means something is running on an OS that’s installed on the hardware, as opposed to in a virtual machine.