Bill Day's Blog

Sun, Apple, and J2ME, Oh My!

A month ago I posted a fateful blog entry, "Hey Apple, Got J2ME?", which continues to draw counter blogs, email, and online responses. There's enough interest in this that I thought a follow-up might be in order.

One thing is abundantly clear from the discussion: Java developers are very interested in seeing J2ME development tools supported by somebody on Mac OS X. Several readers posted links to the tool I mentioned in my blog, Michael Power's MIDP 1.0.3 RI port, while drmccuistion pointed everyone to his OS X port of the J2ME dev tools including the preverifier and responses to Chris Adamson's "Shoeing the Other Foot" mentioned NetBeans, Ecplise, etc. as possibilities. Whether they were aware of the available ports or not, most respondents lamented the fact that neither Sun nor Apple were actively supporting targeted J2ME tools on Mac OS X.

So far, we're all in agreement. That's the good news.

The bad: Whereas I think Apple should develop and support the tools, several readers think the responsibility should fall to Sun. Note the careful choice of the word "should", as opposed to "has to" or "must"...this distinction will be important later.

kuwan wrote:

It should be Sun's responsibility, not Apple's, to port the Wireless Toolkit (WTK) to Mac OS X. In checking the J2ME web page I found that you (Sun) provide the WTK for Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Why don't you provide it for Mac OS X?

while cjgraham responded:

I totally agree that Sun needs to step up to the plate on this item. Has Bill contacted the team inside Sun to find out what the holdup is?

In fact, I have spoken with engineers and marketeers at both Sun and Apple about J2ME tool support. I've lobbied, actually, for the two companies to get together and work something out so that someway, somehow there are supported J2ME development tools for Mac OS X.

Having done this lobbying, however, makes me even more certain that Apple needs to step up on this, and here's why. Every vendor selling a system should (not must, but "should") support developers using their systems. It's in each vendor's best interest to provide the tools that developers need so that developers will use their systems. If a system vendor does this well, their developer ranks grows, they sell more systems, and both developers and the vendor are happy.

Sun sells Solaris and Linux systems. We do our best to support developers on Solaris and Linux. Given Microsoft's lack of interest in supporting J2ME or other Java development, we also choose to support J2ME/SE/EE dev on Windows, too. We choose to do this for one practical reason: Windows is the most widely used development OS and we believe that we need to support it to ensure that developers on Windows systems will be interested in using Java and J2ME.

Sun doesn't sell Mac OS X systems and doesn't stand to gain any system sales by supporting J2ME on Mac OS X. Apple does. And Apple has repeatedly demonstrated their strong commitment to ensuring Mac OS X is a premier Java development platform. It's in Apple's best interest to give developers access to the J2ME tools they want on Mac OS X, so that they'll use Macs for their development and for deploying the server portions of their mobile Java applications when the time comes. Just as Sun should support Solaris and Linux J2ME development if we are to sell our systems to wireless developers and service providers, I believe Apple should (not must, but "should") support J2ME developers on Mac OS X to sell more of their systems.

As codeslave said:

Apple of course is not obliged in porting J2ME into OS X but it would just be beneficial for Apple to do so. Jobs promised that OS X would be the best Java development platform. I hope he can walk the talk on this one.

Whichever side of the "he should, she should" you come down on, I'm hopeful we can all work together to figure out a way to get supported J2ME tools on OS X.

And who knows, maybe just maybe if we do this right we'll have Mobile Media API (MMA) enabled iPods in the not too distant future. I can't wait to program one of those mean little white machines using J2ME!

Comments

• This should be unusually simple
  Well, since the Wireless Toolkit is all in Java, running this on OS X should be a no-brainer.

  No, no, wait. I meant, well, how hard can it be to port from Unix to Unix, um..., from Linux or Solaris to OS X?

  I know, I was right once but I have the wrong attitude—I call it ROWA.

  Posted by: rpg on August 05, 2003 at 03:47 PM

• just arrived !
  By coincidence I started to prowl around J2ME pages and sites just yesterday. I'm a Mac OS X developer and pulled the Solaris WTK104 stuff.

  It seems close to running -- when I fire up the emulator I get:

  gavin% ./emulator -version
  Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
  at com.sun.kvem.environment.Resources.(../src/com/sun/kvem/environment/Resources.java:82)

  Of course, I've no idea what to do now, since I don't know what the exception is referring to, but it seems enticingly hopeful!

  Posted by: gavineadie on August 05, 2003 at 04:14 PM

• RE: This should be unusually simple
  Agreed, from the technical side of things it should be straightforward. Unfortunately, as Daniel Steinberg noted recently, this one's not a technical issue. For more on my thoughts about the business issues at play, you can also see my comments in response to Chris' counter-blog.

  Posted by: billday on August 05, 2003 at 05:55 PM

• Hindrance to switching to Mac
  My dad just switched to Mac OS X and he could not be happier. Why? Because the Mac provides the best tools around for manipulating movies and pictures.

  Now, take me, for example. I always wanted to switch to a mac, but the first thing i look for is whether or not i have access to the tools to do java development on it.

  i looked, and i passed and converted a windows xp box to linux instead.

  i was one customer apple lost simply because it was not keeping up with what the other platforms provided. sure, my $1700 is negligible when compared to the overall sales picture, but did sun lose anything by my choice? well, not as much as apple lost since sun couldn't care less whether i develop my apps in linux, windows or mac.

  as part of its commitment to java, the mac should have the latest tools possible. as pointed above, it's a question of who has the most to gain from a j2me toolkit implementation in mac os x.

  Posted by: kalim1998 on August 05, 2003 at 09:01 PM

• If Sun won't Support Apple Who Will?
  I think Sun needs to support the toolkit for the following reasons:

  Besides the toolkit, J2ME developers need support for emulators from handset manufacturers, such as Nokia, Motorola, etc. Sun has the connections and pull to make this happen. Apple doesn't.

  Sun owns the J2ME toolkit and Java technology. Apple doesn't.

  How does it look to other companies if Sun won't support Apple? Will they be more or less likely to support Apple? I think the answer is obvious that they will not support Apple.

  Right now, J2ME developers have only one choice: Windows. Yes, you can run Linux or Solaris, but you will not have some of the mainstream tools you need like Illustrator. Give developers a choice of a platform that has both mainstream applications and is not Java hostile (i.e. Windows).

  The Sun's commitment to write-once-run-anywhere and open source seem hollow , since Mac is not supported. I think Mac is a compelling platform for developers and that Sun will get the blame, not Apple, for not giving developers a choice.

  By the way, I tried to get some of the J2ME ports running (ex. MPowers and others) running in a few hours at the Apple store, with no success. I was very disappointed and bought an XP system..

  Posted by: jfagan on June 17, 2004 at 02:02 PM

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