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Send the man a copy of the Parrot Sketch.
Sun Microsystems' outgoing chief executive Jonathan Schwartz has opened his swansong JavaOne with a parting challenge to Apple's success on mobile. Almost a year after Apple launched the App Store, Sun has unveiled an online shop and warehouse for posting, selling, and downloading apps built in Java and JavaFX - the company's …
There are many possible scenarios if you miss the boat:
- You wave it goodbye
- You jump for it and miss, sinking quietly without a noise in it's wake
- You jump for it, grab the back of the boat, lose your grip and get ripped apart by the propellers, causing passengers to gawk and wince at your bad luck and bloody mess
- You jump for it, grab the back of the boat, but haven't the strength to get in - you call out to the passengers for help, but they ignore you, leaving you to be 'that annoying person' always yelling from the back
- You jump and make it, sitting with the others enjoying the ride
- You jump and make it, cause dissension amongst the passengers and crew, declare a mutiny, push the captain overboard and take over, setting sail in your own direction.
I wonder which of these Sun and Microsoft et al will 'suffer'
There are a few places around the Internet to pick up good J2ME apps. A lot of good applications go relatively unnoticed, or at least it seems that way. Having a well-advertised location to pick them up would be nice, especially carrier-supported. It might lead to more and better applications.
Of course, if AT&T ever sponsored GetJar, then it is likely that support for unlocked or non-AT&T phones would end. AT&T actually has a rather nice market place for Java programs, including a few retro-arcade titles like Ms. PacMan and others, but it absolutely refuses to allow you to buy them using a phone which it does not sell. So my K790a and (as of tomorrow) K850i go Pac-Man-less and mobile banking-less as a result.
At least for the later I have a fairly good substitute in Opera Mini using my bank's web site.
Oh, where was I going with this... if marketed properly, advertised properly, stocked properly, and sufficiently open, a good J2ME Store would go over well, I think. Phuq the "Apple envy" stuff -- there have been third party online store fronts to buy Palm, Windows Mobile, and J2ME applications long before the Apple Store (or whatever the flake it is called) came about.
Paris, whatever the flake.
Sun had infrastructure in place to advertise applications and download software with Java applets for some time. I have been wondering when Sun would make this jump.
http://java.sun.com/warehouse/
With all of the work Sun has invested in back-end systems, cloud computing, Java, Identity, and Directories - it would have made sense to make this jump earlier.
Sun has traditionally been a company to develop infrastructure for partners and allow the partners to build those markets while Sun seldom released products into those markets. The historical result - those small partners lost the markets they built when a heavyweight moved into those markets.
Perhaps, Sun is finally preparing to do more vertical product marketing.