Comments on: Dear Apple: Some Java Love, Please?

By: Rollley

Rollley — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:57:41 +0000

The major problem here is not that “Apple simply made a business decision and us Java guys got cut from the budget”, it’s that Apple is actually HOLDING BACK Java on the Mac Platform. Either do it or don’t. We are kept in limbo by Apple, and that hurts.

It really makes me wonder why Apple still wants to control the Mac version of Java…

By: Mustafa Sait Özen

Mustafa Sait Özen — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:20:25 +0000

Please Mr. Steve Jobs help us for Java 1.6 developing in our 32-bit macs. I can develop only JDK 1.5 based projects in my mac. I have to use vmware fusion for JDK 1.6 based projects. It is not good for me because I need windows or linux for developing JDK 1.6 based projects on my Mac OSX!!! It is a shame for Apple.

By: Roxon

Roxon — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:14:42 +0000

The reason for restricting Java 6 in this way is the same as for a lot of other techs where there is no support on not-completely-up-to-date machines:
Apple always tries to force ALL Apple users to buy new and more expensive Apple machines.

That’s one of the reasons I didn’t switch to OS X some years ago but went to Linux instead.

(and to the trolls: I wonder why your comments are not simply deleted…)

By: Jan Erik Paulsen

Jan Erik Paulsen — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:07:30 +0000

So, no Java 1.6 on my 32bit PPC machine. Totally pisses me off. But I understand why. The simple fact is that iPods and iPhones make more money for Apple than whiny Java developers. Oh la di da, we bought a laptop from Apple. That totally makes it worthwhile for Apple to drop billion dollar projects like the iPhone and focus on men with beards who only run Linux on their servers because of “freedom and stuff”.

Java developers are a million plus group of people and yet are probably completely irrelevant to Apple. They crunched the numbers and we got beat by 14 year old girls who like pink ponies and who thinks John Mayer is totally dreamy. This is all marked economics. How many Java developers run OS X server ? Oh, wait, you’re talking about the desktop API ? Swing ? The API that Sun ignored for five years ? Now it’s all about cowbell and stuff they tell me.

Maybe I sound like a douche here, but Apple simply made a business decision and us Java guys got cut from the budget. Start deploying on Apple hardware and maybe Apple would listen. Java 1.6u10 is not Java 1.6u10. It’s “Java on the Desktop 1.0”. This is why people are bitching. The Sun promise from 1998 is finally here and Apple stopped caring a long time ago.

Blame Sun, not Apple. If you think this is all bullshit, start reading stock tickers. Both Sun and Apple got a ton of cash. But Apple got the balls to move in a new direction. Sun buys MySQL (with $50m annual revenue) for (evil pinky) one billion dollars. Now THAT is radical. Now Sun has two open source databases under partial semi-permanent control.

Sun focuses on the server and Apple focuses on the desktop. Sun could have spent – one billion dollars – on the Java 1.6u10 for OS X, but instead they bought MySQL. Why ? Because Sun wants to sell more servers. Apple wants to sell laptops, portable music players and cellphones.

By: joeygibson

joeygibson — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:27:41 +0000

Ooooooook, Ivan. I wasn’t talking about the iPhone, but whatever…

By: Ivan

Ivan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:36:42 +0000

Java is dead, that’s why the Android is going to wipe the floor with the iphone. Wake up Jobs, your house is rotting.

By: Sakuraba

Sakuraba — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:05:51 +0000

Apple has NOTHING to gain from Java. They are a consumer-company, and lets face it, there arent that many consumers that would refuse a mac due to lack of Java support. We will not see better Java support, because it does not drive sales of Apple machines.

On the other hand, does the lack of Java6 really matter? Some companies havent even switched to Java5 yet.

By: LCB

LCB — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:18:16 +0000

I have been developing in Java on the Mac since before 2000 when the only version supported was 1.3.1 (IIRC). Back then Apple was very excited about Java – they even paraded around any existing Java apps that targeted the Mac (ours was one of the first – a pre-press layout app). The reason was to attract people to the platform – they didn’t really care about Java, it was a means to an end. From the beginning they were way behind the curve in their releases – especially when they went from OS9 to OSX. They weren’t going to upgrade Java support on OS9 when they knew they were working on OSX and Java support there – two reasons: one, they didn’t want to duplicate the effort to support Java on both – two, they wanted devs to develop for OSX and not OS9.

When OSX took off and devs eventually native apps appeared in enough quantity then Java was no longer important to them and they started putting it on the back burner. Not only with regards to being released years later than the same release on Windows/Linux, but also with regards to support as a first tier language for development.

So yeah, OSX and Macs are great – I use my MacPro for all the dev work I can (current employer is a Linux shop that doesn’t allow me to use OSX), but don’t hold your breath waiting for Apple to care about Java on OSX or do anything different than they are now – we are second class citizens to them and always will be.

Fortunately for me I have a 64 bit machine and much of the dev work out there still targets either Java 5 or versions of Java 6 that work on my MacPro – many enterprise shops are farther behind the curve in this regards than Apple. Sad but true.

We are left to our own devices. Steve and Apple just don’t care and don’t want to hear our complaints which we have voiced for years – crying in the wilderness.

By: joeygibson

joeygibson — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:43:35 +0000

Yeah, Jack, I know about SoyLatte, and have used it. But the problem is that it uses X11, which looks like total crap on OSX. (That’s X11′s fault, not the developers of SoyLatte.)

By: Jack9

Jack9 — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:17:48 +0000

http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/static/soylatte/

Eclipse is happy, I’m happy.