I recently downloaded the M1 release of Eclipse for Mac OS X and I'm really pleased with the improvements over the previous release.

The biggest change by far appears to be improvements to the underlying SWT implementation for OS X. These improvements are quite noticeable in the application's performance, stability, and general interaction with the IDE. The editor feels speedier. Things generally work. This may be picky but the arrangement of the various panels making up a perspective could not be moved prior to this release.

For the first time I feel Eclipse on MacOSX is now more at par with distros for other platforms. I still complain about the fact that default editor shortcuts are not more in line with the native editors on OS X. Option-Right normally takes me to the next word. Having to remember to type Command-Right in Eclipse is disappointing..but easily changed. Rather than complain, I should revise the bindings and submit them as recommended default bindings for a future release.

I've been using a Mac for a good six months now and I finally feel that the java IDE's are getting there in terms of stability and performance.

I'm also glad to see that Apple is adding code completion to its IDE (renamed XCode), which i await with anticipation. NetBeans works great on OS X with the caveat of losing focus on the Find dialog box, which I use so often that this issue has become major for me. I have not yet ascertained whether this is a general problem or whether it is specific to my configuration. I was pleased to see that redefining the key bindings in NetBeans was easy and fast. I feel I must also mention jEdit which has impressed me in both its design and how combined with a set of plugins becomes an IDE at par with the others. Its abbreviations and code collapsing features are really nice.