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Sun To Build World's Biggest App Store Around Java
CWmike writes "Sun Micro plans to launch an App Store that could make Apple's look smaller than a 7-Eleven by comparison, CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote on his blog this week. Schwartz indicated the Java App Store, code-named Project Vector, will focus on PC users and estimated the size of the community at 1 billion. Sun plans to allow Java application developers to submit programs to a simple Web site so the company can evaluate them for safety and content before presenting them to the Java audience. Sun will charge for distribution. The company will reveal more details at its JavaOne conference, which opens June 2 in San Francisco, Schwartz said."
I take everything Sun says these days with 10 grains of salt. They still have some great products but they are not without their problems. They talk everything up big and have grandiose plans that have sometimes proven to be vaporware.
I was at a Sun Developer Day earlier this week. In a room full of 600+ people they took a show of hands about who was using JavaFX (almost no one) and MySQL (10%). They then proceeded to do 1.5 hour long in depth sessions on each. Then look at VirtualBox. Awesome software, and improving more quickly than VMWare - lighter weight too. Yet they insist that no one wants Parallel port virtual devices even though people are clamouring for it.
Oh well, Sun will fade into Oracle in the near future...
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Schwartz kept mentioning JavaFX, so this in theory does mean phones too.
While Swing is a desktop platform requiring a full Java SE, JavaFX is supposed to target different devices. Now it so happens that the desktop implementation of JavaFX runs as an abstraction over Java2D and the AWT but this needn't be the case. Today's OMAP3 smart phone is plenty powerful enough for many small screen desktop Java SE apps, RAM excepted. (you wouldn't run eclipse on it!)
So while Swing and SWT may have too much 'bloat', the idea is to create a movement around JavaFX that has a smaller footprint so that they'll try to sell JavaFX applications that run identically on a desktop and a phone.
I like Java. I do a lot of work in Java. I even ship an application written in Java that is installed on thousands of desktops worldwide. So, you can probably count me as a Java fan boi but I gotta ask:
Why the hell is it that after 14 years of Java we still can't get a Java app that looks and feels like a native app on Windows or Linux or even Solaris for god's sake. Why does anyone trying to ship a Java app either have to make the user jump through hoops installing JRE's and JDK's and other nonsense or has to code up special installers and .exe's to launch the JVM?
I ship an app on the Mac written in Java. Despite Apple's current pull back on their Java support, at least a Java app gets packaged up the same way as a native app and the Java runtime is installed as part of the OS.
Now, I understand that Sun has no control over Windows, but could we at least define a standard location for the JRE? Could we have a standard Java launcher that doesn't involve command line goo?
And as for Solaris - you still have to launch Java apps by running "java" from the shell or inside a script. Bourne shell scripts have been executables for 30 years, why the hell can't Java apps be executables as well? Solaris is Sun's OS. Java should shine and be the recommended language for everything.
And don't even get me started on "Java Web Start". Half the browsers leave little .jnlp turds all over your download folder or desktop.
Sun has simply fallen down with Java as a desktop platform. It's hard to deliver apps written in Java to customers, period. Swing is *still* ugly - and that's comparing it up against Windows UI's.
And there's still not a decent GUI builder for Swing. The NeXTStep GUI builder in 1997 worked better than Netbeans does today. Every time I add a component things it's a 50-50 chance that my whole layout will be destroyed as Netbeans moves things around randomly.
Sun, you have just failed so badly at making Java a viable desktop language. Maybe Oracle can clean up your mess but I doubt it.
The problem with this idea, is that PC users already have an App Store... It's called the Internet. Or Walmart.
Seriously, there's no incentive to use their Java App Store on an open system (home computer) which is very much unlike with the iPhone, where you have to use it in order to get apps.
The idea of an "App Store" is appealing, even when you're not forced into using it. It simplifies the acquisition of software by giving every product an identical and simple way of buying and installing it. This, of course, has existed for forever in the F/OSS world in the form of package managers/repositories, but this doesn't really exist on Windows, which (*gasp*) is still what the vast majority of people use.
Right now, if you want software for your Windows box, you can go to the store and buy a CD/DVD, pop it in, click through an annoying wizard and you're done. OR you go the internet route, which can get unnecessarily complex for the average user. This involves finding the software (if you're lucky, google will point you a primary or trustworthy source), paying for it(which usually involves creating an account for every product you buy since they're all from different vendors), downloading it, decompressing it (which can involve dealing with any of the existing compression schemes, which you may or may not have software to decompress), installing it (if you're lucky, it may just be an executable and your life will be easy), and possibly authenticating it (which requires annoying hoops to jump through as well as providing personal information).
While I'm not a fan of one company having a monopoly over software distribution, it can definitely simplify the process. You're able to find everything from a trusted source. You only have to make one account. You can then install anything you want with one click, iTunes style. This isn't something that's meant just for your grandma, either. I'd love to save the headache of sifting through all the crap to get something new up and running. It worked for Apple, it worked for Valve, and it's certainly possible that it'll work for Sun.