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Apple Releases Java 1.4.1 Developer Preview
kuwan writes "Allen Denison, Java Product Manager at Apple has just sent an email to their java-dev mailing list announcing the availability of a Java 1.4.1 Developer Preview. This preview is available to all ADC members and can be downloaded from the 'Download Software' section of the ADC web site. The preview is under a non-disclosure agreement so you won't be able to talk about it except on a private Apple mailing list. It's good to see that Apple is making progress on Java 1.4 and Mac OS X users will soon have the latest Java VM."
As with any preview release, there are lots of bugs. Some related to 1.4.1, some related to this specific implementation. Apple spends a lot of time with their Java implementation, so anything fixed in Sun's 1.4.1_01 will be fixed by the time this is released.
No, Apple's VM is a port of Sun's HotSpot.
The version "1.4.1" refers to a version of the Java specification. I believe that the "_01" only refers to a patch level of Sun's implementation.
... that's certainly something to get bent out of shape about.
Others in this discussion are correct that Apple's JVM is at least partially based on Sun's, and Apple has in the past opted to keep their patch numbers (the bit past the underscore) correlated with Sun's, suffixing Apple-specific patch numbers to the Sun patch numbers.
However, what goes after the underscore is to some extent up to Apple -- all that matters is that they're keeping up with patches to Hotspot. So don't get too bent out of shape over the missing "_01", because you're not usually going to see it in their annoucements anyway.
Now if Apple is actually fails to keep integrating patches