Reality distortion for Java on Leopard?

By releasing the latest version of Mac OS/X without support for Java 6, Apple has managed to attain unpopularity and court controversy. When Mac OS/X version 10.5 - or Leopard - was unleashed this week, many expected it would come with Java 6 support - not least because Apple as good as said it would. But when the code …

[Tommo_UK]

Who cares?

Who uses or write in Java 6 yet anyway Most stuff isn't even coded in Java 5 yet. What a load of hoohah over nothing. Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple reason behind the silence

If he says it will be available on the xyz date and then they miss it, they will get slagged off.

If they release it in a months time, they can say "Hey we're so cool, we listened to feedback and responded to it".

Of course cynics may say they pushed it out early and not fully ready in order to make the Christmas rush...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the reality distortion?

> Surprisingly the opening blurb in the Java section of the Apple

> Developer Connection (ADC) Web site, still proclaims Mac OS/X as the

> "only major consumer operating system that comes complete with a fully

> configured and ready-to-use Java runtime and development

> environment".

>

> Is this another fine example of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field at work,

What reality distortion? It has Java. It's not Java 6.

Dare I say that there are probably more machines running OS X than Linux? If that's true, and Sun can provide Java 6 for Windows and Linux, shouldn't they be providing it for OS X too? I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

No doubt Apple will have it before long. In the mean time don't get your knickers all in a twist.

[Ralph]

Balance?

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/javaben/archive/2007/10/more_on_leopard.html

[Anonymous Coward]

to be fair..

.. OS X does come with a fully configured JDK. It's just not the version everyone was hoping for.

[Peter Davison]

Apple's Java Tradition

In Mac OS X.1 they had Java 1.3.1, in X.2 they also had Java 1.3.1 and later updated to 1.4.1.

Panther gave us Java 1.4.1 and later updated to 1.4.2.

Tiger gave us 1.4.2 and later updated to 1.5.

Leopard, following tradition, gives us Java 1.5 as this is the last version of Java for Tiger. So I was not surprised.

Following their tradition Apple should release Java 1.6 for Leopard in a later update.

At least Tiger and Leopard provides Java 1.5 - most Unix OS's are still on 1.4.0 or 1.4.1!!!

[Marcus Bointon]

At least it has it at all

Just a minor point: out of the box, neither Windows nor Linux include Java at all, so this is a pretty dumb complaint. To install Java on Linux typically requires you to enable "non-free" repos in your package manager, which many people don't like to do (and the GPL Java hasn't trickled all the way through yet). It's true that OS X Java releases trail Sun's releases by a bit, but count your blessings - it used to be a good 18 months behind in OS 9, and at least it includes something reasonably modern out of the box, unlike anything else (except possibly Solaris?).

[Eddy Ito]

Paws for thought

It could be that Java 6 was holding up the whole kitten kaboodle and the decision was made to let the cat out of the bag without it. I'm sure the team knew customers would growl but I'm sure they would rather have OS X purring smoothly and not clawing the carpet with a stinky 6 ready to toss it in the litterbox. Sooner or later when the new Java is out, Steve will still be sitting there with that classic Cheshire grin and we'll be looking for another canary.

hmm... maybe the canary thing is going a bit far.

[Nexox Enigma]

Slackware?

"Just a minor point: out of the box, neither Windows nor Linux include Java at all"

Slackware actually comes with JRE 1.6 on the first disc, and I'm pretty sure that it is selected by default. You might not want to generalize about Linux much in regards to which software is included, as there are so many different distros that you're almost bound to be wrong.

And its my understanding that nobody actually uses or wants to use anything later than 1.4.1 anyway.

[Jose Hales-Garcia]

Take a deep breath

Relax. Think positive thoughts--Ruby on Rails, Ruby-Cocoa and Python-Cocoa bindings, Objective-C 2.0, Dashcode, Core Animation, DTrace, etc.

What is the relevance of Java 6 to most developer's needs or, in particular, Leopard developer's?

[t3h]

There's a beta floating round...

There was a beta posted on the ADC website that later disappeared. Given previous experiences this usually happens when there's nasty last-minute bugs. It usually surfaces in a few weeks.

[Kanhef]

Curiously...

There was a Java 6 SDK preview available a year ago on the Apple Developer Connection site. It is no longer there. Makes me wonder if there are some issues (diabolical plots) going on inside Apple.

[Bryn Smith]

Waiting on Cupertino

Thing is, unlike Unix/Linux/BSD and Windows, you can't just download the JDK from Sun for Mac OS X. Apparently this is because Apple told Sun it was going to take charge of development of the Mac OS JRE/JDK.

So anyone who wants to use the latest features of Java *have* to wait for Apple to get off their backside. Since Java 6 has a few important features (for example, the new layout manager used by NetBeans apps) there are a lot of people who would love to see it available for their Macs.

[Joe Cooper]

The silence

Developers producing software for the Apple platform - some of whom use Java - do not like this silence. My company produces a Java application and produces a Mac deployment. In fact, all our computers run Mac.

What's unnerving about this is not the old version - which works fine - but rather Steve Job's habit of springing nasty surprises on people, combined with his comment that "Nobody uses Java anymore". Am I the only one who remembers that?

I am aware that it is perfectly okay to be late. Microsoft was just very late. OSX was a little late. It's okay to be late. But it is not okay to be secretive about the future of products that your developers depend on!

Hinting that they don't want to support Java anymore, dropping the developer preview of the new version, and refusing to talk about developer plans - when I see that, it makes me think Jobs plans to come out 6 months from now and say "SURPRISE!!! We dumped Java. Too bad for you guys!"

Then we'll have to dump all the Macs at our studio and get Windows. They will HATE that.

[Steven Dick]

Java 6 is used/needed

I'm a Java developer and I need Java 6. This means if I was looking for a new PC, then Macs would be out of the question.

It's bollocks to say that no-one uses Java versions above 1.4.2 (it holds more water for web-based Java and J2EE stuff), as my last major project had everything running on 5.0 and was looking to move to version 6.

You don't need to change any code to use the newer versions and the move from versions 1.4.2 to 5.0 to 6 provided measurable performance improvements.

And lastly, Java 6 has been out for almost a year! Apple need to stop being control freaks and let Sun do the Mac JDK, since Apple don't seem to see it as too important.

[Charles Miller]

Apple never promised Java 6 for Leopard.

Apple didn't even "as much as" promise. Reading the blurb for the WWDC session you linked to, they promised "resolution independence, a crisper Aqua look and feel, a 64-bit virtual machine, and more", all of which are delivered as part of the Leopard's bundled Java 1.5.

What happened was that a bunch of people who didn't know any better assumed that Java 1.6 would be in Leopard, despite the fact that Apple never said it would be. And after talking up that release date for months, they forgot that they'd made it up themselves in the first place!

[dpbsmith]

Heidi Roizen said it all in 1996.

From memory, what she said at AADC 1996 was: "We've been asking developers what we can do to help them, and we can boil almost everything we've heard down to one sentence. What developers are saying to us is, Apple, please:

1) Tell us what you're going to do.

2) Then do it."

[Anonymous Coward]

@Heidi Roizen said it all in 1996.

Does that also include

1.1) Tell us what you're NOT going to do/ship.

If not, then you missed the point of this article.

But I agree with you, Apple sucks on the communication side of things, that is soooo true!

1. Any company developing apps for mac os x should get a free copy of a beta version.

2. Before they remove stuff, they should tell us!