Apple Freezes Java Support for Cocoa

Nice2Cats writes "A little message on Apple's Developer Connection tells us that Cocoa for Java will get no new features after 10.4. The full text is: 'Features added to Cocoa in Mac OS X versions later than 10.4 will not be added to the Cocoa-Java programming interface. Therefore, you should develop Cocoa applications using Objective-C to take advantage of existing and upcoming Cocoa features.' Is this bad for Java, or bad for Apple, or bad for both, or doesn't anybody give a damn anyway?"

Comments

Re:What does this mean for WebObjects?

[Feral Bueller]

"Now, of course, it seems as though Apple Doesn't Want You To Use Java Anymore. Does this mean that WO6 will drop Java support, or at least bring back Objective-C?"

Not. Really. It indicates that Apple wants you to use Java for Web services and Objective-C for applications. As previous poster already mentioned they are merely killing support for the Cocoa-Java API so I don't see there being much of an issue: I worked on a number of custom OS X apps at my last gig: this announcement would not have influenced any of our projects then and certainly wouldn't impact anything moving forward.

I'd be interested in hearing from an actual developer who *is* impacted by this.

To put this in perspective:

[tod_miller]

If someone writes a widget that places icons in the task tray, that only works on SCHOOMOO operating system, and then writes the Java class and JNI calls for this, but then goes and releases a new version of the widget, but doesn't update the Java classes.

+1 mod points to everyone who spotted this is neither anti-java or anti-Cocoa, in fact, it is pro Java because no Java developer wants to be bogged down with much non-portable code or mac only code.

I would wager than Apple was even nudged by some Java developers who said, yes, this was nice, but look, not much interest in it, we can use our own libraries and keep it cross platform.

This is GOOD for Apple, as this 'embrace the non-proprietary cross platform Java' rather than using Java Cocoa fixated programming, will mean more Java developers will target the Mac. Oooops! But they already do because Java is cross platform. Oh Hahah I am funny.

Now, sometimes you do want to access proprietary extensions, and in yesteryear, the extremely small quirky devices would give some benefits for being able to access their split bars, or their dialogue classes, so each platform had their own set of 'device API's', nothing too wrong with that, but with great power come great erm, device abstraction. Go spidey.

C++ is not a replacement

[mariox19]

With all due respect, have you tried Objective-C? It's far easier to learn than C++, and in some ways far more powerful. Objective-C is a dynamic (late-binding) language. The Cocoa framework could not have been written in C++ -- many, many decisions are made at run-time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one for "language wars"; I'm just saying that C++ is not a replacement. I'm not sure what is, given that Objective-C is fully compatible with C code -- all pointer and bit-twidling nonsense -- and dynamic.

Objective-C coders don't use the language grudgingly.

Re:Why did anyone use it in the first place?

[TheRaven64]

Why was anyone using it in the first place?

I can think of one reason for using it. If you have an existing Java application and want to release if for the Mac, it makes a good choice. If you run a Swing or SWT Java app on OS X without any changes, it will look native, and it will almost feel native, and that almost is enough to really irritate users (including me). Replacing the original GUI with one drawn in IB (so you get the HIG spacing guide lines) and with controllers written in Java as a thin wrapper around the existing model code would be a significant benefit in terms of usability.