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Apple Deprecates Their JVM
Mortimer.CA writes "In some recent release notes Apple has deprecated their JVM: 'As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated.' In the past Sun (now Oracle) has always let Apple do this: 'Apple Computer supplies their own version of Java. Use the Software Update feature (available on the Apple menu) to check that you have the most up-to-date version of Java for your Mac.' I wonder how much heads-up Oracle was given for this change, and if the Java team has any code ready to go, or whether they'll have to ramp up porting for Mac OS 10.7 (aka 'Lion')."
This seems like a similar move to the obsoleting of Flash. Cross platform app development was useful when Apple was struggling to compete. Now Apple doesn't see any particular need for cross platform apps, because the breadth of app types is already covered by native Cocoa apps. They won't exclude Java in the way that they excluded Flash on the iPhone. But there's no need for them to spend development time on bundling it with the OS.
Honestly, with the talk of app stores, the ridiculous talk of macbook air's being the 'future of computing', and other things from yesterdays announcements, I will be keeping my eye closely on linux for the time being. I'm not sure I'm going to stay with Apple for my next computer. They seem to be going in a direction I'm not comfortable with.
This means that the Apple-produced runtime will not be maintained at the same level, and may be removed from future versions of Mac OS X.
Obvious reason: people aren't using the Apple-produced runtime in Mac Applications?
Applications developed in Objective-C / Cocoa are more specific to the OS X platform, providing Apple a competitive advantage when developers build their apps using Cocoa, instead of something portable like Java.
Not in Apple's best interest for Mac apps to be developed using Java.
Not only can they be run on other platforms, but Java-based apps may not conform to Apple UI design guidelines
They don't need to create an Installer, they need to create an entire port to a new operating system. The low-level threading and memory management, the GUI.. who wants their Java apps to be running under X11 on Mac?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
In the past I've heard macs referred to as the ultimate developer's machine, with a full UNIX, all the gnu tools, a nice UI (with X if you need it), and nicely integrated laptop hardware. But Java is still one of the top languages on the planet, so if Apple really stops keeping it up to date that could put a nail in that coffin. Heck, I'm pretty sure the Apple Store has a big pile of Java back there...
Apple doesn't maintain a distribution of python, but you're still able to run Python on OS X. The only thing that's really going to change is that it won't be Apple doing the work, it will be Oracle.
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And after removing Flash and Java and publishing the "We want the web to be open" public letter Apple still requires Quicktime to watch videos on their own website. Hypocrites.
By which you mean the JVM? It has nothing to do with "internet standards" ffs.
You do know that 'Java' is to 'JavaScript' as 'car' is to 'carpet'. Beyond a few shared letters for early buzzword compliance, and things like the Rhino interpreter, there is no real relationship between the two.
All those sexy HTML5/JavaScript apps have to be written in programming languages and hosted on servers. And plenty of people are building on top of the JVM. Large chunks of both Twitter and Foursquare are written in Scala, a JVM language. Why? Oh, something about how it is good for long-running processes due to something ridiculous like a million engineer-hours going into JVM development.
If we should get rid of technology simply because it is old, let's get rid of C. No, wait, let's not. Because it is a useful and practical technology, and we should base our technical decisions on technical merit not on buzzword compliance and what appeals to Web 2.0 shiny-seekers.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
Or they looked at the Android lawsuit and said "Hmm, I don't *think* we're breaking any laws, but why take chances?" Oracle is playing a different game with Java than Sun did and personally I'd want to stay out of it as much as possible. There's lots of reasons they may have done this and with ~8 months notice Oracle has plenty of time to build their own JVM.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
And all along I thought it was because it just wasn't ready for production use.
The BSDs are still working on getting ZFS good enough to use. Everyone I knew that tried it on OS X said it was shit.
I don't think they will because I believe that Apple would rather developers use Objective-C over Java for OSX development for the very same reasons they would rather developers use Objective-C over Flash for iOS development.
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