J2EE Development on MacOSX

RyanG asks: "So I'm looking to get a new laptop and have found myself very tempted by Apple's iBook for a variety of reasons like cost, performance, size, etc. Now I know Steve Jobs once touted the Mac/OSX as the (future) premier platform for Java development but I'm curious to know what people think of it in practice? I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who work with JSPs and Servlets."

Comments

WebObjects

[Lally Singh]

Webobjects is a great development environment. It's all Java w/v5, well priced (only $99 for students, $699 for everyone else), and is finally getting some good documentation. I'm getting into it myself and I'm pretty impressed.

If you don't like WebObjects, that's fine. Tomcat runs great on OS X (and you can find a point-n-click installer on the web), and Project Builder is a good dev environment. Besides, where else can you use photoshop, illustrator, gimp, and apache all on one box?

Server Side Java Development with OS X

[jefflinwood]

Hi, I bought a Titanium G4 400 for doing exactly that. I struggled with the choice between the iBook and the TiBook for a while, but the bigger screen and G4 processor won me over. Apple supplies an IDE with the free Developer Tools for Mac OS X download. I haven't used it yet - only mucked around with it. I'm using BBEdit Lite and the Mac OS X 1.3 Java runtime and compiler. I forget if that comes with the OS or with the development tools.

A good website (and you probably already have been there) is http://developer.apple.com/java.

Here's a good overview from Apple of Developing Java Applications on OS X

Just for another point of reference though, I use the open-source Eclipse IDE on my Windows 2000 Athlon, and I love it. I'm used to developing server side Java on Windows, though. As far as I can tell, Eclipse isn't available for OS X yet. They'd have to port the SWT widget set to OS X. However, JBuilder 6 is coming out for Mac OS X, and should have the native Aqua UI.

And last, just to stoke the flames, I think a lot of the people who use Linux would benefit greatly from taking a look at Mac OS X. Go down to CompUSA or (insert-your-retailer-here) and play with the new G4 boxes. The Aqua UI will blow your mind (XP doesn't even come close).