Enough with the Java drama queens!

Filed under Apple, Photography, Software on October 31st, 2007

Does this sound familliar?

I think we’ve been quite loyal to Apple. But as of today, that’s all changing for me. Today I am saying “so long Apple. The party’s over.”

What party do I mean? I mean the free ride that I as a Java developer have been giving Apple for way too long now. And as we have remained loyal to Apple, Apple has basically spit in our face. Not only did Leopard not ship with Java 6, but Apple, in typical fashion, apparently thinks it has no obligation to its customers to inform them about why the plans changed, and when (or even if at this point?) Apple will ever have a working copy of Java 6.

It’s just some random choosen weblog entry of a java developer whining on about how Apple is evil not to include Java 6 on Leopard. Enough with the Java drama queens I say.

I work with Java myself, as a matter of fact. Mostly with the web tier stuff, using in for projects ranging from huge corporate portals to internal enterprise applications.

Yet, I do not feel strongly about Apple not including Java 6 on Leopard 10.5.0. Why? Several reasons.

Who needs Java 6, anyway?

I don’t. You probably don’t. In fact the only people needing Java 6 are probably working at Sun or some large developer tools vendor. Now, wanting Java 6 is something else altogether.

Java 6, see, is the latest stable release. Yet most shops (and all the sane ones) still are two releases behind (Java 1.4). Some brave souls have even made the leap to the previous release. Noone that has a business to run, is selling software, or deploys web services and applications uses Java 6. Where by noone I mean: very very few people.

Would I like to play with Java 6? Sure. It has some shiny new toys. Do I need it? Not really.

Java 6 is coming

While Apple is silent on this matter (as on every other matter), I have no doupt that Java 6 is coming. Beta versions of Java 6 for OS X where available previously. Pressumably Apple pulled them off to prepare for the final release.

Why wasn’t it included in Leopard? Well, Leopard was getting late. Apple had to do some prioritizing in order to ship on time. It’s not only Java 6. Several small or big features never made it to Leopard 10.5.0 (Time Machine with wireless disks? Full on resolution independence?). Mark my words: Java 6 will be offered as a download from ADC before the year’s end.

Eventually it won’t matter, anyway

People are switching to Ubuntu because Java 6 is not included in Leopard? WTF? Considering what I wrote above about the current unimportance of this particular release, how stupid are those people? Did people switch away from Linux when Java was constanly released with a big delay from a third party source (remember Blackdown java folks?).

Besides, with Java released as Open Source code we could get a OS X distribution from a third party. Alternatively, SUN could get its act together and provide an official OS X distribution as they do for all other platforms. It’s their toy. It’s their job.

That Apple insisted back then on providing its own version of OS X Java is no excuse. SUN can still provide a bare bones release of Java for OS X (perhaps with a slightly worse platform look & feel, or without Java-Cocoa integration –which is useless anyway). It’s only a UNIX system with some cool Apple libraries thrown on top, anyway, how hard could that port be?

Java 5 works just fine

Meanwhile, Java 5 is included in Leopard, works like a charm, and is just fine for programming gigs that pay the bills. Unless you work at Sun.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 3:03 pm.
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