Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Java 6, Leopard, Apple, Sun, who's really to blame?

Oh dear, I fear I may be jumping on the bandwagon. Nonetheless, here I go...

By my count, at DZone, there are at least 7 articles written specifically about the lack of Java 6 on Apple's new OS, Leopard. Which means there's probably at least 700 written so far, scaling up by a reasonable factor for all those posts I missed, forums and whatnot.

Now here's the thing - everyone seems up in arms about APPLE not putting out Java 6 on Leopard, but this seems quite odd to me. In what I think is the best analysis so far, [Time Code] posts some very relevant thoughts, the most interesting of which is Gosling's own admission that he has abandoned the Mac. I remember reading about this a few weeks ago, but I dismissed it quickly, since it didn't seem that there was anything here other than pure self interest at play - of course Gosling would switch from an Apple built machine running OS X to a no-name machine running Solaris - which one does Sun have a better interest in seeing Gosling champion? Hmmm you do the math.

In other opinions around the 'sphere, Michael Urban, from DZone itself, writes that he is so angry he's selling every Mac he owns - scary stuff -- I'm glad I don't have to work with someone like that, but that's beside the point. His ire isn't directed at SUN, it's pointed at APPLE. We get a counter point from Jeff Shell, calling the Java community Cry Babies. After reading Michael's post, I think I see where Jeff's coming from. My buddy Steve Harris, fortunately a little more reserved in his judgement, also makes a practical point - we at Terracotta write only Java Software, and most of us, including yours truly, have Mac Laptops so there's a real practical problem at stake here.

What I fail to understand in all of this, and hope to bring to light, is that for all the ire pointed at APPLE, where's the anger at the real company to blame for all of this - SUN. Yes, that's right, SUN. The most ironic thing I find in Michael Urban's post is this quote: "and will spend most of its time running Windows". So let me get this straight, Michael. You're going to sell all of your Mac machines, in extreme protest against APPLE, and run WINDOWS? Let's not forget that MICROSOFT out and out tried to destroy Java a few years ago, and no longer produces a JDK either (self interest again - .NET competes with it so I don't blame them). It's not as if the Linux community is producing JDKs either - in fact no one out there can due to SUN's licensing problems which only went open source as of last year.

My point is, SUN is to blame here, not APPLE. Those of us using Mac machines have been shielded from the glaring omission that is SUN's lack of support for the Apple platform, and it wasn't very nice of Apple to simply throw us into the cold swimming pool without warning, but let's not blame APPLE for the fact that SUN is the real bad guy here. The Java 6 Download page is as telling as anything you could want. (Note that I cannot link to it directly since it requires a "Sun Login" which is about as stupid a thing as I can imagine, but we have no other choice so we dutifully login to get our fix...). It lists the following operating systems: Windows, Linux, Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86, Solaris x64, Linux x64, and Windows x64. What is missing from that picture??

So before everyone starts flaming away (which you will anyway, I know you want to) -- I am aware of the rumor that APPLE insists on doing their own JDK. Until someone can substantiate it, I am inclined to believe that if SUN really believed in the Mac platform, they could probably have inked a deal by now so that they can ensure the livelihood of Java on the Mac Platform - in other words, I cannot believe that Jobs could really enforce Sun to NOT support Java on the Mac platform. It's not as if Gates wants Java on Windows either, but it's there.

As a last sidenote, the thing that amazes me is that I am writing this Tuesday morning, Oct 30. It's been a mere 4 days since Leopard's release. It seems to me that if you are complaining about broken things with a brand new Operating System 4 days old, and particularly if you are complaining that your production systems are impacted because of it, you might want to re-think your rollout strategy when it comes to new software. Patience is going to be the key here, I hope in the meantime APPLE does the right thing and lets people in on their plans (which they won't, which is why people are so angry with them, and I get that). In the meantime, I would like to switch to Leopard, because it looks really cool, but it seems I'll have to wait for the first -dot- release, not just because Java 6 isn't on OS 10.5, but because the guy that runs our IT department has some sense in his head and imposed a company wide lockdown on company owned Macs -- no Leopard for us until the -dot- release.

Until then, if you're angry about Java support on the Mac, tell Sun why don't ya?

17 comments:

fabrizio giudici said...

> I am aware of the rumor that APPLE insists on doing their own JDK. Until someone can substantiate it...

Let's put it in this way: Gosling told it, and we can assume this is the official word of Sun. Apple didn't deny it. So to me it's not a rumor but the official point about things.

Taylor said...

Right. Then explain to me how mono (.NET implementation) can exist on the Mac platform without the explicit blessing of Jobs?

fabrizio giudici said...

Maybe Apple doesn't care about Mono? With "doesn't care" I mean "is neutral".

BTW, Mono is an opensource effort lead by volunteers AFAIK (at least officially). So at this point I'd rather ask why the efforts of the opensource community to port the OpenJDK to Mac OS X aren't much stronger (they are not zero, there's some guys that is trying to, but at the moment it sounds as the effort of a few brave guys).

PS I'd be really glad if Sun took care of Java on Mac OS X. And I repeatedly blogged about it. And others did too.

Taylor said...

Too bad they don't seem to be listening.

Unknown said...

Sun never has the good role anyway. On one hand they are accused of controlling Java too tightly and on the other hand you now want us to blame Sun for not doing enough work on Java?

Let's get pragmatic for a minute here. Look at the numbers. How many people, and potentially Java programmers, are using a Mac compared to a Linux or Windows box? It seems sensible for a company like Sun not to waste resources on such a product (even though they did have an internal Mac port of the JVM at one point.)

I use only Macs, for my personal use and for work, I happily switched to Leopard and Java 6 is not here. Too bad for me, but that's the way it is and I knew what I was getting myself into. Nobody ever forced me to use a Mac for Java development and nobody forced me to upgrade to Leopard.

fabrizio giudici said...

I'd also point out this: originally, the idea of Java was that other manufactures licensed it and took care of it. So it was for Microsoft and IBM. Microsoft played the bad game, so Sun was forced to take care of Windows. IBM played fine and it's still making its own JDK. So, if Sun has to take care of a certain o.s., it is because there's a problem with the manufacturer of that o.s.

Now, may I say that if we're at the point that Sun should take care of Mac OS X (and I repeat, I wished they did) this means that there's something wrong with Apple?

David Herron said...

Um, the game with Java is that there are multiple "vendors" providing Java implementations. It's not that Sun does every single last drop of delivering every implementation of Java. It's that Sun works with partners who in turn deliver Java implementations. Microsoft could have cooperated with that vision and been the vendor delivering Java for Windows, but they couldn't play by the rules of the game. That left Sun holding the bag in terms of delivering Java for Windows. On the other hand Apple has been doing a good job of playing by the rules and delivering a decent Java for Mac OS X. Apple is a Java SE licensee and I suppose that's what James Gosling referred to in saying Apple insists on doing their own.

Unknown said...

Its not a rumor.
I sat and listen to Steve Jobs at his Keynote at JavaOne pledge to do the ports of Java to the Mac.

whp said...

I agree with the point that patient is what is needed. Apple was late with other JVM releases wasn't it?

What are the apps for Mac written in Java that HAVE to use Java 6 features and that Mac user would kill for?

Sure, this situation with Java no Mac is not good and Apple isn't doing anything to comfort developers and I think they should - they are responsible for developing Java for MacOS X, it is their choice - they should treat their customers the right way. Why Apple aren't doing it is beyond our knowledge. Let's face it - Java is not the priority for Apple. It is just one of the features of their offering.

amalter said...

The other posters have it, but I think it bears repeating. Every official word from Apple and Sun indicates a technical and legal agreement that has Apple being responsible for the OSX JDK. Before the time of the OpenJDK and the replacement of the encumbered components, creating a JDK port often required cross licensing, manufacturer support, etc. With Steve Jobs announcement that Java was a first class citizen in the OS X ecosystem, you can bet that was backed by agreements between the companies.

When Gosling made his announcement that he moved from his MacBook, I read it as him feeling betrayed that internally Apple decided that Java is unimportant. (Not that there are not reasons, Java on the client has yet to achieve any desktop prominence or fulfilled it's potential. But, goddamit, we are just around the corner for a renaissance)

My predictions..
In a few weeks/months, Apple will come out with a Java 6 JDK. With the iPhone and Leopard and whatnot, the JDK was just not seen as important internally, but they know they need to have something, if just to continue to claim the XServe as a viable workgroup server replacement. However, it will be a half-assed port that will reflect Apple's feelings about the platform in general.

At somepoint, the OpenJDK people will get frustrated with this and try to port to OS X on their own. The core OpenJDK will be better than the core Apple implementation, but it's integration with the OS will be far weaker. Suddenly, OS X users will be in the boat of having multiple JDK's with multiple versions from multiple vendors. Like the disgusting situation on Windows, app developers will either have to start hunting down the 'right' version on the filesystem or packaging their own.

Somewhere around JDK9 and the next decade, this will all get worked out, just in time for Java to be officially deemed REALLY the next Cobol and all the cool kids are working on some new great ErPyRuGrovCala language.

Great... Blame whoever you want. I think I'm going back to BASIC.

-Adam Malter

James said...

While I'm on the STFU side of the fence in regards to all the moaning about Java6 on Leopard, I gotta disagree with you here. Apple is and always has been responsible for Java on OS X; I cannot in good conscience place any responsibility for Java6 on anyone else's shoulders.

Would it be nice if there were a Sun impl? Maybe. Sun certainly has far more reasons to care about Java than Apple does. But things being what they are this is Apple's OS, and Apple's source. If there are any criticisms about Java that need to be made, they should be directed towards Apple.

Other people have said it better than me, though: Apple is a consumer computer company. Consumers don't give a rat's tookus about Java. Java developers do, certainly. But they fall lower on the priority scale. This should surprise exactly no one, but nonetheless it seems to.

Unknown said...

I would not be disappointed to see Apple NOT handling OS/X porting of Java. I do cross-platform development (as do a lot of Java developers, I suspect)... and just this morning I had to hack up my OS/X Java installation to match the other platforms (Why is it Classes/classes.jar where everywhere else it's lib/tools.jar???)

It seems the IBM/Eclipse model (used a lot of places) would work - have Apple fund a couple of headcount to contribute to the OpenJDK/Macports version. The hard part (open sourcing) has been done. Now they can focus on the other hard part (Swing on Cocoa or Aqua or whatever it is these days...)

I would bet the market penetration of Mac among developers is higher than the overall market - so it would be nice to have better Java support before we all go running off to Ruby!

Mark

Unknown said...

I have to say I find this JDK6 conundrum quite irritating. All the management in our tech department have moved to MacBooks recently (thanks in large part to VMWare Fusion). I've been moving all the developers to Ubuntu from XP (Can't beat the compile times).

Our shipment of Leopard came in today and I had to run around stopping management involved in our project from installing it. I had to explain that even though JDK6 was promised for Leopard, it's not there and won't be for a while.

I'm tempted to install Ubuntu with bootcamp and be done with it.

JP said...

Yes i agree.People rarely use Mac and we need to support majority and leave the rest always.

Thanks
prashant jalasutram
http://prashantjalasutram.blogspot.com/

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By the way ,the nike max ltd is really good NIKE air shoes ,don’t forget buy the puma mens shoes and nike air max ltd by the internet when you need them . Do you know Nike Air Shoes is a best Air Shoes . another kinds of Nike shoes is better . For example , Nike Air Rift is good and Cheap Nike Shoes .the nike shox shoes is fitting to running.
Spring is coming, Do you think this season is not for Ugg Boots? maybe yes .but this season is best time that can buy the cheap ugg boots. Many sellers are selling discounted. Do not miss . Please view my fc2 blog and hair straighteners blog.
.thank you .

I like orange converse shoes ,I like to buy the cheap converse shoes by the internet shop . the puma shoes and the adidas shoes (or addidas shoes) are more on internet shop .i can buy the cheap nike shoes and cheap puma shoes online. It’s really convenient.
Many persons more like Puma basket shoes than nike air rift shoes . the Puma Cat shoes is a kind of Cheap Puma Shoes .
If you want to buy the Cheap Nike Air shoes ,you can buy them online. They are same as the Nike Air shoes authorized shop. Very high-caliber Air shoes and puma cat shoes . the cheap puma shoes as same as other.

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