John D. Mitchell's Blog

Playing with Java v1.5 on Mac OS X

Sam Pullara has done some work to help people run some of the Java v1.5 features on Mac OS X. Note that his work is based upon the bundles made available as part of JSR-14 and is therefore a bit out of date relative to the official releases for other platforms (even more so when the next official beta is release in the next couple of weeks).

I don't know about you but I'm finding Apple's lackluster commitment to Java on Mac OS X a bit frustrating.

Comments

• What is it that Apple is not doing?
  I am not surprised that OS X does not have a beta of 1.5 out yet. I am curious as to exactly what is missing on OS X? I use it to develop every day and have not found it lacking.

  I am curious to read what you feel is missing.

  Posted by: mzarra on May 22, 2004 at 05:23 PM

• What is it that Apple is not doing?

  I am curious to read what you feel is missing.

  
  The JDK 1.5 beta.

  Posted by: ccombs on May 22, 2004 at 08:51 PM

• Apple supports Java
  Your suggestion that Apple does not support Java is ludricous. Maybe you should complain instead that Sun does not provide a Java 1.5 beta for Mac. It seems that there are always people who demand new toys from Apple, even if Apple has a reasonable delivery schedule. Note that many developers in large software makers are still working on Java 1.3 (not even 1.4), because of their own project schedules and multi-platform builds. Apple has gone to greater lengths of integrating Java with an operating system than any other vendor, including Sun. In a Mac, Java is not so much a developer's kit but a part of the system. Apple includes Java 1.4.2 with Mac OS X 10.3, and provided pre-release versions to members of Apple Developer Connection. It has increased the amount of common code with Sun's JDK, in order to reduce the inevitable schedule difference between the Sun implementation and its own implementation. So judging from past experience, developers can expect to be offered a pre-release version of Java 1.5. Before writing, have you considered waiting for the preview release of Mac OS X Tiger? If you are so much eager to play with Java 1.5, why don't you adopt a multi-platform development environment (say tinkering with Java 1.5 on a Sun machine) and actually learn to appreciate the benefit of all your Mac customers having a common JRE, presently at 1.4.2 level and later on at 1.5?

  Posted by: sngraca on May 24, 2004 at 02:59 AM

• Heh
  I don't know about you, but I'm finding Sun's lack of commitment to OS X frustrating.

  Posted by: benpoole on May 24, 2004 at 03:05 PM

• Heh
  LOL! Thanks.

  In this case, I do actually give Sun a bit of a break because Apple is a plenty big company which certainly has the resources to make Java kick ass on its own operating system and hardware.
  

  Posted by: johnm on May 24, 2004 at 05:13 PM

• What is it that Apple is not doing?!!!!!!!!
  Apple putting the developers on their platform in a backward position. I do consider J2SE 5 late for Mac when it has been possible to run J2SE 5 beta on Linux and Windows for many months already. IDE's like IDEA 4.5 now fully support it and the books are starting to appear. Here where I live we have had a late summer, its been winter like for at least a few extra months, thats how it seems with the Mac releases as well.

  I had thought for sure that Panther would see J2SE 2, to bad I bothered to upgrade to Panther because most new Mac features do not do it for me, my G4 is dedicated to Java work. Funny thing is that Linux and Windows never need new versions to run new Java releases, why does Apple place the cart in front of the horse all the time?

  When will it be possible then to get Tiger and work with the DP based on Sun's Beta 2? If its summer of 2005 then I really need to get a new platform to stay current with the vast majority of the world.

  Regards,

  thefox

  Posted by: thefox on June 30, 2004 at 03:37 AM

• What's missing:
  Mostly Server stuff, but pretty necessary. Like:

  SSL on non-blocking sockets (need desparately!)
  Stack Traces on other Threads (would be sooo useful)

  Posted by: masseyis on September 09, 2004 at 03:56 AM

• Apple's Lack of Commitment:
  I find it very discouraging as a JSP developer, it seems to me that you have two choices, go with Microsoft or go with Linux and I have been a long time supporter of Apple. In general, I like what they do, but I do feel we stay behind the curb on Java... for example, I am running Tomcat 5.5.9 on my Windows Development machine at work and I can not run it on my iBook G4 with Mac OS X (10.3.8) because it does not have Java 1.5 (5.0) and apparently on April 29, 2005 (when 10.4 is released officially-- Tiger) it will still be at 1.4.2 according to everything I have read. This is just my .02 worth, but I am frustrated as well.
  

  Posted by: irishmike on April 13, 2005 at 07:18 AM

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