Life hands Sun steaming sack of... "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." The chorus of a person who gives just enough of a shit about your problems to console you, but not enough to actually help. Lately, somebody has been consoling Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, but nobody is helping. When Schwartz took over for Scott McNealy in 2006, he inherited the Java ME …
... that the sack of $h1t3 promotes growth the same way a fertilizer would do. You can grow some more lemons; bigger and better than the ones you were given. And that's where the World Domination Plan starts making sense.
Anti-radiation goggles to avoid major eye damage from the awesomeness of my foreseeings.
"They have likely realized what they're up against, as evidenced by the JavaFX launch page. Is that a Flash video player I see?"
No, its a Java FX Mediaplayer, launced from some .jar file .. a quick scan of the page code would have told you that.
I'll get my coat, its the one with the glasses in the top pocket.
Not sure if you aren't missing something there. Your emphasis on that figure, and your line
"If Sun is hoping that JavaFX will gain critical mass on the mobile platform and then leverage it to spread it to the desktop targeted web, then they are sorely mistaken."
makes it unclear where you're coming from.
Sure, Flash is on 99% of yer typical desktop/laptop 'net-enabled PCs, but you don't seem to be accounting for the point that "typical desktop/laptop 'net-enabled PCs" are only 1% of the computers in the world, and the other 99% of them are mobile phones. (And, of course, there's the /other/ 99%, which are embedded in toasters and washing machines and garage door remote-controllers and such, but they're irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion; point is, desktops are a tiny fraction of what's out there).
If Sun could own a significant piece of that market, why would they even need to *care* what happens on the "desktop targeted web"?
So I think you've misunderstood their strategy, if you think the attack on the mobile market would just be a prelude to trying to take the desktop market. The amount of mobile internet users these days is still only a tiny fraction of all mobile handset owners, because of the expensive rates for data access, but we can expect that to fall over the next few years, and sooner or later pretty much all phone handsets are going to be not just capable of but actually playing rich internet content. Sun want it to be their player that is used. You almost said it yourself:
>"If Flash ever comes to the iPhone, JavaFX mobile will be instantly obsoleted."
So first off, the obvious point: that's an if that hasn't happened yet. Sun have time to make the first move. But secondly, it's not true that if Flash *ever* comes to the iPhone, JFXM will be wiped out. It'll happen if Adobe shift arse and get Flash on the iPhone soon. If they don't, and if Sun can get JFXM apps onto iPhone first - as well as these other handsets that Adobe still would need to address separately - then they have a chance to build up a significant lead.
If Adobe left it for more than a few years, Sun might just be so well entrenched that it would be Flash that was the irrelevancy. Because the new mobile market (potentially) so vastly dwarfs the existing desktop-web market, there's no guarantee that the existing winners will come out on top; there will be an entire ecosystem of new publishers and developers coming on-stream, none of whom will be comiitted or locked-in to the existing desktop formats. Sun's strategy is to be there to welcome them and try to get the same lock-in on the mobile market that Adobe has on the desktop. It's a risky strategy, it's not guaranteed that they'll manage to be VHS rather than Betamax, but it's a threat Adobe has to take very seriously if they don't want to be left in control of what will be (relatively-speaking) a shrinking niche market on the desktop.
So I think your article missed the angle. From Sun's point of view, this is certainly a business strategy rather than just nerdy geek technology-pride thing. As you so clearly point out, it would be stupid if it was done for just that reason! But I think from a business point of view, it makes sense. Adobe has the desktop locked down, so they're washing their hands of it and trying to skip one jump ahead of them to the next big platform. I think it makes sense. It isn't guaranteed to work, but as your article also makes clear - implicitly - what else could they do?
Ted - you still there? Or has your head exploded? ;-) Anyway, quick question - are you running Linux? The reason I ask is - JavaFX video isn't yet working properly on Linux. I'm told the JavaFX team is working on fixing it. You know the problem with code, though - it's only done when it's done. The point is, if you're using a platform that JavaFX supports for video, you will actually see JavaFX video on JavaFX.com. At this point, people who see JavaFX video will no doubt start complaining that they *wish* they could see Flash video ;-)
The truth is - it's early days for the JavaFX platform - there's lots more that the JavaFX team still has to do. If you understand how new technology gets adopted, though, you should be able to understand that JavaFX is currently at stage that's easily good enough for early adopters to use.
For what it's worth - I don't think you're right about the window of opportunity being gone for JavaFX. The Internet is still quite primitive and evolving rapidly - including the distribution channels. So there's still everything to play for... and it's not the zero sum game that you seem to think it is. That is, for JavaFX to win - Flex/Flash/AIR, Silverlight, AJAX and/or Obj-C don't have to lose...
I followed the link in the article using Opera 9.63. It tried to load some Java applet and then threw up a security warning:
"(1) The certificate for "JavaFX Runtime" is signed by the unknown Certificate Authority "Object Signing CA". It is not possible to verify that this is a valid certificate.
(2) The certificate for "Object Signing CA" is signed by the unknown Certificate Authority "Sun Microsystems Inc Root CA". It is not possible to verify that this is a valid certificate.
(3) The certificate for "Sun Microsystems Inc Root CA" is signed by the unknown Certificate Authority "VeriSign, Inc.". It is not possible to verify that this is a valid certificate.
(4) The certificate for "VeriSign, Inc." is signed by the unknown Certificate Authority "VeriSign, Inc.". It is not possible to verify that this is a valid certificate."
Oops! Perhaps that is because Opera is missing a certificate licensor or maybe the chain really is broken. Anyone else get better mileage? At any rate, I clicked reject. Ho hum.
You will never see either Java or Flash on an iPhone...because both allow app developers to circumvent Apples lock on what is allowed to run on it or not.
The people who use Blackberries don't care if Java or Flash runs on their phone because they are too busy emailing.
Whether or not you see it on Windows Mobile phones doesn't matter because if you are developing an app to run on a windows mobile phone you WILL use the Microsoft framework
You *will* see it on Symbian that owns more than 50% of the Market share though...but people are only going to use it to develop another version of tetris and snake.
I have enjoyed Sun-bashing in my time as much as the next guy. But now that's just shooting at an ambulance. If Apple or Google were announcing JavaFX I bet Ted would not be eructing here. Why not give Sun a chance - personally I like he premises of JavaFX (RIA platform on feature phones) ?
There's a lot in what you say, but you're *still* only looking at a small fraction of the market; namely smartphones. You can start to see the light only if you consider all the Series 40 and other mid-range handsets from Samsung or whoever that are out there. These already run J2ME and it's only a matter of time before they can run FlashLite, JavaFX or whatever. Whether this will simply be used to play Tetris is probably also debatable: remember that somebody in the developing world will likely have this as his only computer, and it's possible that he'll want to use it to calculate farming yields, do his accounts, move money around with Mpessa, or whatever.
Now... is anybody ready to drop the US/European/smartphone blinkers and actually Get It?
If you have a problem with the swearing, perhaps you shouldn't be reading a website produced in a country where "Oi! WANKER!" is considered a friendly greeting among close friends?
See that ".co.uk" bit in the URL? Guess what it means. (Hint: it's named "English" for a reason. Perhaps Americans should consider renaming their bastard version "English Lite"?)
It would appear there are 2 versions of the site. One for JavaFX capable and one for Flash. Since this would equate to good design, making sure everyone can see what you have to say instead of forcing would be viewers to install software they may potentially not want anyways, I would give Sun thumbs for this. Unlike other sites that force you to use the product they are punting in order to view information about the product they are punting.
The fact is that JavaFX does not work correctly on Linux yet. That is why the Linux version does not work. Go to the main page from Winblows and you will see that it is JavaFX. It's really a pretty stupid piece of the argument. Not as stupid as Shwartz's need to claim 100,000,000 downloads of JavaFx, but pretty close...
Most of the market for computers that are net connected may well be in mobile phones but I think what Ted may be getting at is that most internet work would be done on a desktop/laptop computer.
Once you take out the larger screened iPhone/smartphone segment (which is still the minority) would most people perform online shopping, general browsing etc on a 13+" screened machine or a poxy little "hand me the magnifying glass/why is this so slow/fuck my connection has just dropped" small screen pocket device such as these? Even on smartphones browsing is wank compared to personal computers.
Surely the biggest market for phones is in playing video on the move and I would have though that flash has that covered off already if people didn't want to stream mpg/h.264/whatever?
They do seem to be selling a dead dog, especially in these times.
I think that devs will want to write for JavaFX, if just because Java took the world by storm just long enough ago that a lot of people have Java as their first language(and it's still the language used in AP courses). Why learn Flash when you already know a perfectly workable alternative? Sometimes the platform developers prefer wins out over the one with the bigger starting base.
The point behind all Ted's profanity is: who will pay someone to write applications for this platform? JavaME has been around for many years with full support of the handset manufacturers and the networks but it hasn't led to a thriving applet marketplace. The iTunes AppStore might not be making a lot of money for many (if anyone) but within one year it has become an established marketplace and distribution channel.
Adobe has poured resources into Flash since it took over Macromedia and has been very successful in positioning it as a multi-platform multimedia solution. And while it is giving away the player and the SDK it still has plenty of products to sell developers who choose to use the stack. What is Sun hoping to sell on the back of all the giveaways or even product adoption?
I've been messing around with it for a bit now, and my own opinion is that I think it's promising but the tools are crap.
In its favour JavaFX is a literally free upgrade if you have a Java runtime installed already - just find a page with JavaFX app and the runtime just installs automatically. JNLP in Java was seriously undervalued previously but the new process is easier. Also, JavaFX has much, much, much better potential of run anywhere than either Flash or Silverlight. Silverlight in particular is a complete joke for portability as people duped into believing Moonlight will work will find out all too soon. I think Flash is the real challenge. Despite some of its shortcomings Flash is a pleasure to program and again, most people already have the pre-requisite runtime.
Where JavaFX is let down is the tools. Netbeans has rudimentary support for the scripting API, but no visual tools and terrible introspection and code formatting. Editing a GUI by hand is so 1999 and such a drag as you must construct the layout from horizontal and vertical boxes. On top of that JavaFX also has a very strange scripting language. It's not Java and its not Javascript / ActionScript either and it has some very peculiar semantics. Once you've done a few programmes it seems less alien but it is far too easy to get into trouble. Its not helped either that its a very brace-happy language and its very easy to mess up closing braces and get cryptic errors.
I think once JavaFX 2.0 appears and a decent GUI to go with it (preferably in Eclipse), the thing will be on an even footing with Flash. Even so I wonder if Sun can compete when Microsoft is literally buying itself deployments, money hatting everyone left right and centre to use their tech. Much though I love Java I do wonder if as the space, money and mindshare to survive.
I like the register but I love Ted Dziuba. Why is everyone so down on him? He shows he clearly understands many things others have missed. As for the profanity, so what? If I want dry commentary on the IT world I can go to any one of a thousand places. Only Ted tells it like it is in a way that makes you laugh like your mate at the pub would...
This post has been deleted by its author
(This is the second time I've tried to post this comment; it appears that the Reg is happy to take content from anyone except those that can actually put together a well reasoned argument which doesn't include swearing).
To quote John Lawton (a REAL reporter) from many years ago,
"The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion"
Ted Dziuba spent five minutes working at Google as an "intranet web developer" and then left to found his own startup, Pressflip.com (a web site that simply seems to forward search terms to Google as far as I can see). Undaunted by such a misearble resume he turns to the only thing left to get his fifteen minutes of fame: he becomes a blogger. Since writing in a well reasoned, articulate way won't get him noticed he takes the easy route and writes about subjects of which he knows absolutely nothing. To make him appear edgy and in-touch he uses large numbers of expletives. This simply add weight to the idea that "profanity is the sign of a weak mind trying to express itself forcefully."
Regardless of what I think of Sun or JavaFX this shows me just how far down the barrel the Register are having to scrape to get content these days. I hope that the big IT companies that pay for advertising on this site (which is losing all credibility by publishing this kind of drivel) will start voting with their cheque books and canceling their advertising. Free speech is great if it's at least got some level of accuracy to it.
Clearly Ted has issues. He's not a programmer "spewing a bunch of nerd shit about runtimes and native code", he's not a boss and he's not got any money. This seems to make him angry which is his weakness. There was no mention of the fact that JAVA and JAVAFX offers a standards based method of implementing code. SVG and all that is proper and that does count for a lot.
As for the douchebag fools who are attempting to censor the "bad" language I hope you all die of a new and amazingly painful form of colon cancer.
Seán, you really, really need to get a sense of perspective on your life. Stand back and have a look at your monitor. YOU'RE READING A WEBSITE ABOUT THE IT INDUSTRY!
Fine, feel free to critisise and flame people as much as you like, even use profanity and expletives if you're incapable of using the full power of the English language in no other way, but wishing death on people by cancer? You must have some serious personal and psychological issues if you truly believe that this is warranted when people have merely posted a comment regarding the language used in an article about a piece of software.
Alternatively, grow up and start acting like an adult.
Interesting that you refer to Mr Schwartz as 'obnoxiously long haired'. Around my neighborhood we know him as 'my little pony tail' or 'my little pony' for short.
Also you say:-
'Trouble is, whenever a dude starts talking up his installation count, you know he's bullshitting. So, take Schwartz's estimate with a grain of salt.'
Nailed him in one !!!
I suspect he has even started to believe his own propaganda.
Is all the Ted-bashing intended to be self-parody? It certainly seems not, since it lacks just the bit of stylization that gives such work a final polish.
Ted was blogging for quite some time at uncov (and elsewhere before that, even) before selling out here.
I'm just disappointed he didn't go the whole hog and call if JavaFux.
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