Gosling Reacts To Apple's Java Deprecation

Kurofuneparry writes "Apple has announced that Java is deprecated as of the most recent update to OS X. This shot across the bow is getting some responses. To Jobs' claim that 'Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms,' James Gosling is quoted as saying that 'simply isn't true.' Much talk of a coming turf war is to be had. This certainly can't be unrelated to statements from Jobs recently covered on this website and is sure to make waves. Apple has enjoyed significant success recently accompanied by a widespread sense that they can do no wrong in business or design. However, is deprecating Java a mistake? It doesn't take much insight to connect the dots and see that Apple has starting marking friends and enemies relative to the increasingly heated fight for mobile and other platforms."

Comments

If you mention Goslings reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

at least link to the corresponding blog:
http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/steve_jobs_comments_on_apple

Re:What are the negative consequences?

[the linux geek]

No Eclipse, which is used in a vast number of development tools (including non-Java ones), especially for embedded systems. No NeoOffice, which (at least last time I used OSX, which was admittedly a LONG time ago) is the only way to make OpenOffice on the Mac usable. And plenty of business applications are in Java, either as applets or standalone applications - they'll break too.

Re:Oh honestly

[jgulla]

First off, IBM and HP maintain their own JVMs (as did Microsoft until the Sun/MS lawsuit). Secondly, Apple insisted on being the one to port their JVM. Reading the blog post by Gosling will tell you that. And thirdly, they didn't do it "for free" (at least in the early days - not sure about the last few years). I was at Javasoft back then, and Sun funded some Apple engineers to work on the port.

I don't have a problem with someone else (say, Sun^H^H^HOracle) doing the port - it would be more timely, up-to-date, etc. I just wish they would have had a something worked out saying "We're not gonna support our JVM, and Oracle will be doing this starting on ...
 

Re:Antitrust lawsuit?

[flimflammer]

Huh? What history are you reading from? Microsoft very much did have their own JVM implementation for many years, then Sun started anti-trust litigation against Microsoft regarding it. Sometime in 2001, Microsoft settled and agreed to stop distributing it.

Re:Apple isn't doing Sun's work for them....

[WebMink]

While saying "Apple isn't blocking Sun/Oracle's ability to ship Java for the OS X platform" sounds wonderful, it neglects reality. I'm guessing you should read both Gosling's posting and my article. Gosling explains:

It simply isn't true that “Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms”. IBM supplies Java for IBM's platforms, HP for HP's, even Azul systems does the JVM for their systems (admittedly, these all start with code from Snorcle - but then, so does Apple). In the beginning, Microsoft provided Java for Windows ... Apple was the same ...

and I explain:

Having Oracle take over the development would be hard for several reasons:

• First, the Java port in use includes a lot of Apple know-how that is not generally available (such as private interfaces) to make Java integrate well rather than using just X11.
• Second, it belongs to Apple, so Oracle would either have to receive a copy of Apple's implementation or start again with all the UI and platform native code.
• Third, distribution would move outside Apple's update mechanism so keeping it patched and secure would be difficult - a new installer and update mechanism will be needed.
• Fourth, the new AppStore rules will make sure there's negligible demand for consumer Java on the Mac.

Your view would make a good Apple PR position but doesn't address the actual complexities of the situation.

Re:Cost to support benefit

[JonySuede]

I know of one significant difference between the jvm: I made a scheme interpreter in java for a BSc project and when my interpreter ran on a mac I could evaluate 10000!, it would take a long time but I would finally have a result but on a pc or linux or even a SUN server it crashed around 4000! with a stack overflow. This difference was caused by the JVM, the one on from apple would optimized tail call recursive JITed methods into loop. The one from SUN would not....

Re:No Big Deal Really

[schnablebg]

It has a pro video subsystem, a pro audio subsystem, a pro graphics subsystem, a pro Web development subsystem

I agree with you, but it is very difficult to have "pro" Web development subsystem if you can't run Java apps. The Amazon EC2 tools and the YUI Javascript compressor are two examples of staple web dev tools that are Java-based, not to mention the popular Eclipse IDE which some use.