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What would you do, if Java 6 on Mac OS X would never be ?
Only four days, until Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard launches and it still has not been confirmed that Java 6 will be part of the latest Mac OS distribution. In fact, chances are, it won't.
Take for instance James Gosling's recent blog entry, where he proudly tells us that he no longer uses a Mac laptop and that the Solaris folks have made 'huge' strides in Solaris's usability on a laptop. However, his reason for dismissing his Mac is manly that the Mac hasn't been keeping up as a developer's machine.
OK, you may think that the timing of his blog post is just a coincidence, anyway, James is right. Java JDK 6 is available for Windows and Linux for many, many months now but it still isn't on the Mac; and while someone responded that a beta of JDK 6 is available at http://developer.apple.com/, it is rumored that this isn't the case anymore and that the Java 6 developer preview has been removed.
I'm a purposely vague here, since the last time I wrote something related, an almost immediate phone call from a company in Cupertino, had me edit (cripple) my article severely...
It is also 'rumored' that the latest beta of OS X 10.5 Leopard, which was made available to developers about four weeks ago, did not include Java 6 but shipped with Java 5 installed instead.
Mac OS X is arguably predominately used on client computers, which is not the place where Java has a great success story to tell and besides selling MacBooks and MacBook Pros to Java Developers, there may not be a reason for Apple to further invest in maintaining a Java VM and JDK.
So there is some indication that Java Developers on the Mac (which includes yours truly) may be up for a big surprise on Friday, when the next big cat purrs; and while there is still hope, why not hypothetically try to answer that question, 'What would you as a Java Developer on the Mac do, if Java 6 never arrived?'
I really hope Leopard includes Java6. The project I'm on requires Java6. All the the mac users are stuck developing in VMWare which is far from ideal.
If there's no Java6 support I'll seriously consider replacing my MacBook Pro with a new Thinkpad and Ubuntu.
Don Coleman
... it would be a mess if apple will not release this version! I think the main advantage of java over c# is the 'real' platform independence. I mean c# is available for all windows versions. And there is even a 'smaller' .net package for linux out (mono), so you can say that c# would be a good choice if you want to reach the most (>90%) people.
But with java (1.5) you can reach even over 99% of all the people out there: 100% java for all windows, all linux, solaris, mac ...
Peter Karich
Apple's been talking about '64 bit Java' which can only mean Java 6 in my book all over the ADC web site and in sessions at WWDC; it would be really silly of them to alienate a large portion of their developer community...
David HM Spector http://www.zeitgeist.com/
The fact that the Java 6 preview has disappeared is not a rumor and can be confirmed by looking at the public java-dev mailing list archives. This fact doesn't worry me since Leopard is coming in a few days. Gosling's post alarms me a bit, as well as some other rumors circulating, but at this point I don't want to think of it, just waiting for Oct 26. If Java 6 won't be there, or won't be available as a separate download, I'll start developing with Java on Linux with Parallels. At the moment I've already seen that developing with Linux is much faster than on Mac OS X. Then I'll start a long term planning (1 year) for migrating my work environment (email and other stuff) to Linux - while I know I'll be forced to use Mac OS X for my hobbies (photos) for some time.
Fabrizio Giudici, Ph.D. - Java Architect, Project Manager Tidalwave
I don't remember java being preinstalled neither in Windows XP nor in Linux (most major versions at least).
Mac OS 10.4 at least has Java5. How it makes it a worse developer machine when they at least have java unlike the other OSes. Because of that I really don't understand people like Don Coleman that says "replacing my MacBook Pro with a new Thinkpad and Ubuntu" when the first thing he has to do is then go and download and install Java just like he would have to do for the Mac.
Even if Java 6 will not be installed by standard you will be able to install it. We know that Apple has Java 6. So if developers need it then they will be will be able to download it just like for other operating system. It's pretty much given.
I would also like to respond to Peter as a side note. I like Java fine and enjoy developing web applications in it but I simply have never considered it platform independent. I simply can't consider it to be that when you have to download java first (in most OSes) to be able to run the software. Has always found it sounding a bit like calling Microsoft Office being platform indipendent becaus you can run it using Wine or Crossover Office. (I know it's different how that works but what I mean is that both require a 3rd party tool to run and in neither cases it's running native). And almost every Java software out there also come in Mac/Windows/Linux download availabilities anyway.
Jon Gretar Borgthorsson - http://organized-ignorance.net/