back to article Apple threatens Java with death on the Mac

Apple has "deprecated" Java on Mac OS X, meaning it will pay even less attention to upkeep of the platform, and it may kill the platform entirely on a future version of its operating system. Many seem to think this is minor news. But if Steve Jobs is booting Java from the Mac, he's also booting Java developers, including all …

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  1. Robbie

    Not happy

    I would miss Java, Steve....

  2. Christopher E. Stith
    FAIL

    Blame Oracle

    Everyone seems to link Apple deprecating their own Java version to not liking non-native apps and trying to kill Android for the benefit of the iPhone. Well, consider that Oracle just reversed years of Java policy of their own and of Sun's and decided to sue Google for developing Java that didn't exactly please Oracle. Perhaps Apple would rather have Oracle provide you with Java for the Mac than be sued by Oracle for providing it themselves.

    Oracle's policies on Java, Solaris, MySQL, and pretty much everything else from Sun Microsystems is so far full of Fail.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I really don't see what the problem is...

    As has already been pointed out, Apple is/was the only platform supplying their own JVM; Windows and Linux users have to go to Sun/Oracle to get their JVMs, so why not Apple users too?

    There has been much derision of Apple over the last few years about the way that the Apple JVM lags behind the official JVM, so now why aren't those people rejoicing that the JVM at last has a chance to be up to date?

    Unless of course Sun/Oracle are Apple-haters too...

    1. Penti

      They weren't

      IBM supplies their own Hotspot based JVM to their Power servers with IBM i (i5/OS), to their Z/OS z-series mainframes or Z systems, for AIX, for linux, even did for Windows actually. Before they sold of their pc lineup. Oracle did produce their own JRockit JVM which they will merge with Hotspot, and companies like Azul systems have their own Hotspot based implementations and hardware support/acceleration. And there is SAP too, and a few other really. Linux users go to IcedTea or depending on what environment they run may run JVMs from IBM, maybe even SAP or Oracles BEA buy JRockit besides the old Sun JVM. Oh yeah HP supplies their own JVM to their Unix-platforms too. HP-UX, OpenVMS and Reliant/Nonstop that is.

  4. uhuznaa

    Update

    Steve Jobs comment is this (from http://www.flickr.com/photos/frasers/5104179782/):

    "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."

    Say what you want, but he's right. Java on OS X was always a step behind and Oracle shipping it in sync with the Windows and Linux versions would be The Right Thing to do.

  5. Peter Mc Aulay
    Flame

    "Alienating developers on a grand scale"

    Oh, puh-lease. Despite all the hype and hysteria the Mac is still a minority platform.

    Some students and yuppie developers may care about Java on Macs, but I there are not many enterprises which would even notice. Nobody ever bought a Mac because it had such great Java support, IME.

    Besides, what the world needs is NOT more Java developers.

  6. Yautja_Cetanu
    Jobs Horns

    Don't understand why people are suprised...

    I don't understand why so many (especially opensource) developers love apple so much! In the world of Drupal everyone is on a mac and it seems silly because Apple not only don't promise to "do no evil" this kind of thing like banning java is exactly what they have proven they will do.

    Why did the developer spend so much time trying to convert people to mac?

    1. The Other Steve
      WTF?

      WTF

      "like banning java"

      Or in fact, not at all like banning Java.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Bye Bye

    Java programmers... a bit like civil servants that tell you just how important they are but when they go nobody misses them.

  8. mark phoenix

    Talk about Apple shooting itself in the foot

    Lets piss off Developers who like OSX and make them switch to buying vanilla hardware and running Linux.

    Using VM's / bootcamp are a pain. I use bootcamp for windows for gaming, because I have to.

    If I have to add Linux for Java development, then my next Laptop will probably be a vanilla laptop setup for dual boot, running Windows and Linux.

    1. James Butler

      Exactly

      Buy yourself a screaming Windows 7 laptop ... there are many in the 3GB/360GB/<$400 territory ... download the incredibly easy-to-use Ubuntu Windows installer ... run the thing ... reboot ... BAM ... a new, dynamic Linux partition and full-fledged Linux/Windows dual boot is yours in under an hour.

      While you use the long-standing Ubuntu Software Repositories, with one-click installation of tens of thousands of free (as in beer) Apps, you can remember how cool Apple was when they "innovated" the AppStore.

      And for those of you who are stupidly commenting about how little Java impacts your daily lives, you are clearly uninformed. Java is running, right now, in your car, in your telephone control centers and in hundreds of other places you use every day. Just because you don't see it on your desktop doesn't mean it's not the number one most-used programming language on the planet, right now. There's a reason for that. That reason is its portability between virtually any system configuration. That includes the desktop and server systems you can see with your own two eyes and thousands of variants of mobile and embedded systems ... even extending into hospitals and other critical environments.

      Jobs announcing that his company won't be providing a JVM, refusing to open his company's APIs in any significant way, and threatening every type of developer with his insane knee-jerk responses will push developers away from his platform. Both the absence of a native JVM (because, face it, Oracle doesn't give a crap if the tiny fraction of systems that Apple represents get a native JVM) and the instability of Jobs' management decisions make for an unstable, uninviting environment.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Grow up, James...

        Who supplies the JVM for your "screaming Windows 7 laptop"? Microsoft? No. So why is it Apple's job to supply it for OS X?

        1. James Butler

          Not Sure What You Mean

          Did my comment have anything to do with who supplies the JVM?

          I'm pretty sure I was providing a path to a Java-friendly development environment to a poster who expressed an interest in discovering one. And, if you recall, I was promoting Ubuntu ... which also has its base JVM built by Sun/Oracle, just like Microsoft does. (See if you can figure out *why* Apple doesn't use Sun/Oracle's services ... I'll leave it to you as an exercise that you very badly need.)

          Surely you aren't disagreeing with my statement about how much Java is being used outside of the Macintosh world? Because that would be simply ignorant.

          Have a nice day!

  9. The Other Steve

    Android unaffected

    Because as we see every day in these hallowed and august comment threads, frothing at the mouth fandroids hate Apple with such ferocity it's a wonder they ever have time for anything else.

    And from all the 'open' rhetoric and broken word salad that emerges from the alleged developers, it's clear that most of them aren't old enough to have a job that pays enough to buy a mac even if they didn't.

    Of course, Im unfairly generalising a whole set from an entirely unrepresentative sample, aren't I.

  10. D. M
    Pint

    I"m no fan of java

    But, What would anyone lose?

    Nothing will come close to Windows in business desktop. I do love Linux, but there is no way in hell anything but Windows will own the business world. There are simply too many business critical software tied to Windows. Steve knows it, he won't waste time or effort here.

    Apple is never going to take server market either, again, no lose.

    For those who like to do some independent thinking, they are not likely to use Mac anyway, Apply will not lose any business here.

    For those who are die hard iEverything followers, they will still buy whatever Apple sells. Again, no lose.

    If some die hard Apple followers are force to also use Windows/Linux alone side their iThingy, why is it bad? This way, everyone wins.

    See, Steve is helping Windows/Linux, cheers.

  11. Tom 38
    Happy

    Speaking as a consumer and a developer

    I freaking love you apple. i despise Java, in all its incarnations. If you are significantly twisted enough to develop your apps in this insidious shit hole of a language, at least be kind and do it all server side, don't foist your perversions onto the clients.

    Personally, I've been Flash and Java free for ages. No, I'm not missing anything. I don't want your shoddy plugins and VMs anywhere near my OS.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    Good riddance

    So now we just need Java to die off in Linux and Windows land; and judging by Oracles latest efforts they'll do a pretty good job of that by themselves. Long live .NET Framework and Mono.

    1. M Gale

      At least you listed them separately...

      ...because Mono is anything but .NET.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    I will develop apps using whatever the hell I like..

    ..if that means they aren't accepted on the iToy or on a computer that has all of 1% of the market, well that's just too bad. For Apple.

  14. M Gale

    Reminds me of the Computing In Practice tutor.

    "Java is dead."

    So I stick my hand up.

    "Isn't Android outselling the iPhone right now?"

    So for my usability analysis assignment, he's given me Google. Lesson learned: Never make a Phd look bad in front of his class.

  15. This post has been deleted by its author

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    apple dont want java devs, so whats the problem, just move to RIM ,they like java

    If apple dont want java devs, then whats the problem, devs can just move over to RIM ,they REALLY like java and its developer tools , and they have an actual real dual 1gig A9 Arm CPU to actually help your java commercial and open efforts run faster than the crappy single core Arm A8

    "The other salient point here is that if you don't have Java on the Mac, you can't use Google's Android SDK. Most Android development is done on Eclipse, and though Eclipse isn't required by the SDK, the Java environment is. "I guess Steve really, really doesn't like Android, does he?" Abbey says.

    So, Steve Jobs never gave Java a chance on the iPhone or the iPad. He's now threatening to kill it on the Mac. And in so doing, he's shoving a world of Java developers off his desktops and laptops, including Android coders. "I cannot overstate what catastrophe this is," says one coder." If the future of Java on Mac is in doubt, then I have no other choice than going the Linux way...all the work I've done trying to get all developers converting to Mac is undone.""

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm not complaining because I don't use Java on the Mac...

    First Steve banned Flash on the iPad and iPhone and I did not complain because I did not use Flash; then Steve banned Java on the Mac and I did not complain because I did not use Java; then Steve banned me and there was no-one left to complain...

  18. MinionZero
    WTF?

    WTF are Apple playing at?!

    We have repeated examples of iPhone developers cut from Apple's store wiping out their business income. Flash application developers locked out of Apple reducing their business income and now Java developers getting locked out of Apple. What the hell?!

    From a business perspective, its getting increasingly high risk (for almost all businesses) to base their business model primarily (or even partly) on supporting Apple products, because Apple's repeated moves to close down their platform at any moment could then undermine your entire business income or at the very least hurt your business. That is no way to encourage more developers to support their platform!. This is going to scare more developers away wondering what is next to become closed. Its already scared me away as I was just planning to start supporting Macs!. Like most developers I can't afford to risk time and money on a platform that may suddenly try to cut me out like so many other developers are now suffering. :(

  19. Stephen Bungay

    And the lesson is....

    Don't put your eggs in one vendor's proprietary cart.

    So apple plans on relegating Java to their waste-basket, so what, it's not the end of the Mac world is it? No it isn't, because you can (still) install a VM and run Windows or Linux and carry on carrying on. Note the (still) in that last sentence? Its there because I don't think Mr. Jobs is anywhere near finished consolidating control over his platform. By guiding the Mac users towards one source for their applications, Mr. Jobs can decide what a Mac is or is not permitted to run. He could ban all VMs. Why would he do this? I have no idea. Perhaps just because he wants to (unlikely), or perhaps it doesn't fit in with his grand-plan (more plausible). Does this sound like a silly thing to do? It does to me, but more importantly does it sound possible? Does Java depend on the Java VM?

    Watch the original 1984 Mac Advertisement, see that man on the big screen preaching to the masses? As much as he and others might not like to admit it, 26 years after that advert ran, Mr. Jobs has become more like (than unlike) that Orwellian character.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    why all the surprise , apple.job's did exactly the same with 3rd party PPC HW vendors

    "From a business perspective, its getting increasingly high risk (for almost all businesses) to base their business model primarily (or even partly) on supporting Apple products, because Apple's repeated moves to close down their platform at any moment could then undermine your entire business income or at the very least hurt your business. "

    why all the surprise today, apple or rather job's did exactly the same with 3rd party PPC HW vendors Years ago, when nearly all the 3rd party vendors where producing far better Hardware CPU add-ins for job's Mac baby.

    these PPC CPU OEM's where all working out open plan's to increase the overall market share for apple and everyone involved to become larger and so sell far more kit, but job's didn't like that fact these add-ins where better and faster than his original CPU's or the fact people actually wanted to buy the faster 3rd party CPU options and so job's killed the 3rd party licencing dead.

    lesson learned, know your real apple history , and dont make the same mistakes again, do not trust job's in the long term, he will turn and bite your hand off along with your offerings.

  21. Jim Benn
    Paris Hilton

    Inevitable.

    If you go to the Apple store, you'll see (in the URL) that WebObjects (the 16 year old technology) is no longer used. You can also take into account the "introduction" of iOS Apps onto MacOS X. So

    a "Java-like" development platform does/will exist on Mac OS X (and the iPad and the iPhone and AppleTV). It won't take much to put a JVM on Mac OS X (for the web/JavaScript), so Apple can free up a group of developers to work on other things (whatever).

    And, I think all the folks who say that Apple will give you all the software they tell you that you will want, seems to be correct. I can think of no other reason (apart from saving money).

  22. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Linux

    Easy Peezy

    Apple is worth $91 billion with $25 billion cash in the bank and no debt.

    Google is worth 150 billion and made 14 billion profit last statement.

    Google needs to buy out Apple. 14 billion is more than a 10% down-payment with the rest in installments over ten years. :)

    Kick Mr. Jobs to the curb (Don't feel bad for him, he can go back to Pixar and make Finding Nemo 2: The Revenge) and you are done!

    Its a win - win!!!

  23. PhilBack
    WTF?

    Linux runs on Apple hardware...

    And then all the Java development can be done there...

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Java sucks eggs and is such as has been anyway

    Look at you bitchy moaning Java devs. First you bitch Apple for not having a good Java or being behind the scenes. Then now that you have your arses kicked you bitch and moan at all the extra work it will take for you to do the job Apple was doing making Java for the OS X platform.

    You bitch and moan that the build in is no good. Yet won't install and use any other product. What a bunch of pansy nancy boys spoilt brats!

    I don't use the built in Python or Ruby interpreters that ship with OS X and I have no problems doing any coding with those. Hell I'm not even doing programming as a living and I picked up Objective C easily enough to move my applications across from other languages.

    Why don't you get off your lazy whining arses and actually do some actual work and effort improving yourselves. Java is a dead end, its not going anywhere but down especially now in the hands of Oracle.

    Get over yourselves already!

  25. nsld
    Thumb Up

    Thanks Steve

    One of our competitors has a java driven product for Mac which I come up against on a regular basis.

    Thanks Steve for killing the competition for me.

    I shall look forward to converting them to our product.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    no more Macs then...

    pretty much all of our network management applications are now Java based

    at least that means we can still run Linux, MacOSX as well as windows and still get access - rather than when it was a windows only EXE.

    however, if Java is going DODO on OSX, then I'm afraid thats it. end of the road. there will be no new Mac upgrade for me when my current machine reaches end of warranty. back to 100% linux desktop (with m0n0 for .NET requirements)

  27. Joshua Goodall
    FAIL

    What kind of tinpot developer...

    "if Steve Jobs is booting Java from the Mac, he's also booting Java developers"

    What kind of tinpot two-bit developer doesn't install their own JDK?

    1. Penti

      There is none

      It's the JDK <and> the JRE thats closed down and canceled since Apple is the one releasing it. Not only that but the ones porting it. Only one with at tinpot is you. Please have a clue before posting. Get a grip. You can't install something that aren't offered. Apple is booting their port of JRE7 to the mac.

  28. LimitingFactor
    Thumb Down

    Goodbye Lotus Notes

    No Java on Macs would mean not only no Java dev environments; it will also impact in-house applications for several customers that I know of.

    And IBM won't be too happy about this, too, since Lotus Notes now needs Java. So this means Macs will be kicked out of places that use Domino/Notes.

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