An Open-Source Java Port To iPhone?

An anonymous reader writes "With the first anniversary of open-source Java coming up November 13, a Sun official believes the project could bear a fruit much sought-after in the Java community: a Java port to the Apple iPhone. Apple has not released a version of Java capable of running on the popular device. But Sun's Terrence Barr, technical evangelist for the Java mobile and embedded community, believes Apple's plans to release an SDK for iPhone in early 2008 may result in the open-source phoneME version of Java ME winding up on iPhone."

Comments

Apple & Java don't play nice anymore

[Templar]

Apple can't even commit to Java 1.6 for OS X -- I think you're being a wee bit optimistic.

Re:Why?

[burris]

Given that the only popular Java application on Mac OS X, Azureus, is universally regarded as being slow, bloated, and ugly, I'd say the GP's impression is not at all outdated.

It all depends

[0xdeadbeef]

Will the iPhone's SDK be open, or will it be closed?

Java is a hole in the "security" of devices, in that it allows the execution of arbitrary code outside of the device's native "security model". And I use scare quotes because by security, they really mean control, and by security model, they mean control over who is or isn't allowed to produce software for the device, and run software on the device. If the Java runtime were trusted, then every Java application has the same rights as the Java runtime.

But Java has also been used by those who are legitimately concerned about security, because the virtual machine does actually make the execution of injected code very difficult. And by supporting the runtime natively, it actually gives you better control over what executes and who can execute it.

But that makes it easier to limit the features available on the devices, so you can claim to support third party software and still put up an impenetrable wall between applications and the useful, built-in capabilities that the carriers want to trick customers into believing are special "services" they must pay more for. Bluetooth, GPS, camera, and even networking have found their APIs stripped from Java on certain carriers' devices.

If Apple produces an open SDK, then putting Java on the iPhone is simple matter of porting it. Apple doesn't even need to be involved.

But if Apple uses code signing to control who is and isn't allowed to release software for it, you can forget Java ever appearing, because then anyone could write software for it. They don't seem to be at all interested in supporting Java themselves.

Common Java apps, OS X and Mobile

[Savage-Rabbit]

Given that the only popular Java application on Mac OS X, Azureus, is universally regarded as being slow, bloated, and ugly, I'd say the GP's impression is not at all outdated. I will admit that large Java GUI apps in particular can be slow and buggy and I can't say I can remember a whole slew of Java powered consumer applications that are popular among normal OS X users. I do however use quite a lot of Java apps at work. A few applications I can remember off the top of my head are development apps like Eclipse, Intellij, NetBeans, I have also on occasion used a of Java powered LDAP navigator, a whole collection of SAP utilities, Oracle utilities of various kinds... the list goes on. If I recall correctly I read somewhere that the new Lotus Notes 8 will be Java powered. There are probably a few more Java apps that I use but haven't noticed that they are Java apps since when are properly written and packaged, Java GUI apps can be quite hard to tell apart from regular OS X apps. It would certainly be a lot harder to use the Mac in a corporate environment without Java apps. I can certainly see why Java would be a good choice for quickly bolting together Java GUI Apps on Mobile OS'es and from a business point of view the 'write once run everywhere' cross platform aspect of Java has the same obvious appeal on mobiles as it has on desktop computers. I have seen anything from small programs like expense tracking software to things like fully fledged 3G streaming media players implemented in Java on Mobile Phones.