Some fallout for Android

Apple never really gave two figs for the JVM. It was always pretty shocking quality, always a version or two behind the official JVM. So in one sense it is not surprising to hear it is officially deprecated.

That said, there are plenty of apps which use JVM. Industrial strength apps like Eclipse for example. Eclipse is the development environment which most Android devs would use in order to develop apps so if Java were absent from OS X they wouldn't be bothered to develop there.

Of course what will probably happen is the OpenJDK will fill the hole instead. Ultimately OS X might actually get proper tier 1 support for Java rather than the half assed implementation its gotten so far.

Eating your apple.

In corporatist America, Apple eats you!

@paul-s

It's come out subsequent to this article, but that's Jobs' line. Specifically:

"Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it."

Not only is Apple hoping to offload the task, but it's showing the closest it gets to contrition.

Realistically, you can see how Sun would go out of their way to ensure continuity of Java on Windows but Oracle might not care about OS X. So I think there is a real risk here.

That Is Disgusting And Disturbing

(Kidding! But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to imply such train of thought. LOL.)

I don't see the reason why anyone would be upset by Apple's announcement. From a different perspective, Apple is simply announcing to the world that they are adamant about not following the crowd, about 'Thinking Different'--insisting and thus essentially guaranteeing they'll remain small--just like they did when they announced, 'Flash is over.

Personally, I'm ecstatic--Apple's present ideology allows the space Linux and BSD needs to continue growing and remain relevant, perhaps one day becoming a true major player as a common end-user OS option.

To put it in perspective, imagine if Microsoft were to suddenly announce they will no longer support--or allow--Java or Flash in future releases of Windows.

I would like for all the Apple fan boys to now stop crying about this nonissue concerning Apple.

It is different in effect

Both MS Windows and Apple are closed products. But, to be fair to Microsoft, Windows is more open to third-party software than Apple is. There are no obstacles to supplying a Java environment that will run on Windows, and anybody can get the technical information about the Windows API needed to develop it. Apple makes life a bit more difficult for third-party developers who don't want to be part of Apple's walled garden.

re: you seem confused

You seem to be confusing "we won't run a custom installation" with "we're banning all software written in it from our OS".

Oracle won't be supporting it, it will be banned from Macs.

Freed by Jobs...

In Austria we also forced to install Java for Netbanking at certain banks.

Freed from Java by Steve Jobs. How ironic would that be.

Mac users should migrate to a better supported platform

Here in Hungary, you need desktop Java for filling out the Forms for signed electronic forms for tax correspondance and such (ABEVJava). And businesses cannot send a lot of forms in paper, only in electronic form.

I guess that means bye-bye for Mac with a lot of people here.

Also, if you are an Azureus user (video torrents) you can forget you Mac too in the future.

live auctions

I buy at antiques (etc) auctions and at least one of the major live bidding systems runs on Java. I can update my 6 month old Apple Imac all day long, but the bidding software still won't work. Something to do with applets failing to load.. So I will have to buy a windows machine. Bang goes the budget for an Ipad.

Amongst developers?

"I can't find more up-to-date details but one article citing statistics from December 2009 shows OS X having five times the share of Linux."

Amongst developers, or everybody? Because in the Java dev world, almost everyone I know runs Linux.

Though it will be two laptops for one of our team, who recently got a Mac so he could do some iPhone stuff, but still codes Java with the rest of us. Good ol' Apple. Less functionality is better for you. Diversity is bad. Be the same as the rest. Jooiiinn uuussss....

I am worried.

First, they discarded Java 1.5 on Snow Lepoard, so development tools, people actually payed for, won't run anymore without major hacking around in System directories.

Now, they basically cease to support Java altogether.

If another company, i.e. Oracle wants to continue providing a JVM for the Mac, they'll have to go through all the pain of getting the GUI libraries to actually work on Mac OS. Again.

The last time this took years to finally make (most) applications work (more-or-less) without broken menus, weird dialogs with text labels not fitting into them etc etc.

I find this an incredibly arrogant and stupid move alienating people who have to work with Java (even if they don't really want to) but prefer working on the Mac.

Maybe nobody actually told them that people like me really exist... those who dare to develop in Obj-C and *gasp* use Java IDEs for other parts of projects.

If you want to develop with WebObjects, you'll use Eclipse which needs Java. I really wonder what the people at Apple who work on the AppStore are going to use.

The AppStore runs on Webobjects. In Java. Not iMagicServerThingy...

Open Source

As the article pointed out the problem with developing for Mac OS as opposed to Linux is that the OS's GUI system is closed source and proprietary making it extremely hard for Oracle to interface with it to provide a JVM.

Linux in a VM

Developers could do their Java development on a Mac by using Linux in a VM.

Playing the same game as streaky...

This isn't a problem for because everybody involved in Open Source knows that it isn't. The original story was rubbish because everybody involved in Open Source knows that it is.

Admittedly I've gone a bit further there, by assigning two extreme and fabricated opinions (both false, by the way) to group think rather than just one. But that's the sort of thing you can do when unevidenced bare assertions are acceptable provided vague reference to a thinly defined group is attached.

@Linux in a VM

While you're completely right, doesn't this miss the point?

Why get OS A to run a VM for OS B? why not just get OS B and lose the overhead?

You've missed my point

JAU was quoting stats showing OSX having a much larger market share, but I was making the point that that might be amongst the consumer sector, not necessarily Java developers. The devs I know are just an example to go with it.

And yeah, all Linux baby. For most mainstream development it's just plain better, though I will admit that modern Windows systems are much improved.

Comparisons with Linux

For those trying to compare linux with OS-X, it is an invalid comparison. There are far more server based linux platforms in corporates that require java, therefore they need to support it. It is not really fro those who use linux as a desktop platform.

Re: The Other Stever @Open Source

"Only if Oracle are retards. The API is open enough. Oracle can just go get a copy of Xcode and set to work on a new VM if they want to."

Like how the API was open enough for Adobe to enable hardware acceleration in Flash?

Thought so.

Because...

..It's obvious that disguised Apple fan boys will miss the pretiness of OS X. (At this point, I'm hard pressed to think there is any rationale for them to be 'up at arms', considering the innumerable OS options in the LINUX universe (not to mention BSD, of which I'm particularly fond of).

@AC

What are you talking about? When did Microsoft come into this? On a Windows or Linux system I get my JVM directly from Oracle. Works like a charm. On an Android system there are some wonky workarounds, 99.9%+ of the code for any standard java app I have worked on ports lovlingly and easily.

Only now, my customers using Macs can’t use the Java software they need to send us orders. This upsets these customers, who rely on us to print their orders (there aren’t a lot of other choices in this segment of the industry in our country.) It also upsets us, because we now have to either migrate our customers away from Mac (which I will be doing with a /vengeance/ now,) or supplying them with an alternate system on which to enter their orders.

Lovely.

I don’t see where at all Microsoft enters into this. The MS JVM died ages ago. This is about no longer being able to run critical Java applications on OSX.

@Trevor_Pott

What Mac users can't use Java software? All shipping versions of OS X contain Java. The article speculates that OS X v10.7 may ship without Java but notes that Apple have instead made it explicitly possible to install your own.

OS X has a BSD-sourced POSIX layer and ships with an X11 window manager. The supplied compiler remains GCC, at least while Clang can't parse C++.

This means that customers using Macs will not be able to use Java software as soon as it stops being possible to build it using GCC for a POSIX OS with X11. When do you expect that to happen?

@ThomH

There are considerable difficulties in implmenting the OpenJVM under OSX. As to existing customers, they can use Java...for now. 8 months from now...12? Development moves on, and it takes advantages of new features as well as works around bugs in previous versions. 90%+ of our customer base is Windows. The developer who writes the Java software we are dependant upon keeps that software up to date such that when a new version of Java comes out, they are ready.

If Macs are stuck on the last shipped version (6u20) then they are buggered. 8 Months from now, they most likely won’t be able to use our application because it will be coded for a much newer version.

As to trying to walk people through installing the OpenJVM…forget it. It would cost us less to simply supply a separate physical system to our customers. They are not “savvy” folk. It’s why they chose Macs in the first place. They are quite simply /not/ going to be compiling anything from anywhere…and to walk them through it would be huge support dollars.

Moreover, that is suddenly asking us to pay for the development company in question to support three JVMs: The Oracle standard, the OpenJVM on OSX and Davlik. It is enough that we are paying to get the app repackaged for Android…we’re not about to spend that money again on Mac users.

Java on Macs is done. What exists will rapidly be out of date and the costs of supporting the OpenJVM will simply be too high.