Apple and the future of Java
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Seriously Apple does not have that much of a market share in the desktop and laptop field, and while it is a growing share, it is far from the market majority. Therefore, to think that Jobs is dealing a major blow to Java by not factory installing Java on a machine which is only going to sell to a small percentage of the market doesn't make sense.
If Java is losing popularity as a desktop app programming language it won't be because of Apple.
bellwether
noun
harbinger, herald, indicator, predictor
It's a fast, one day read, and it ages well - I re-read it every couple years.
How about Kickstarter?
Desktop Java is a ruinously expensive legacy that they need to do something about.
All the angry screeds against Steve Jobs won’t change the fact that this is the “ball and chain” that’s pulling Java below the waves.
I think attempting to do cross-platform UIs held Smalltalk back as well. You either have Least Common Denominator native UIs that stink, or emulated UIs that don't look native. "Cross Platform" failed for the general public end-user. Web Apps took up their niche.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2008/12/15/10-rules-for-how-to-wri...
While the underlying logic should be the same, each UI should be leveraged towards whatever OS is running the app. It requires a bit of across-the-aisle thinking to create a decent UI for the other OS, but it's do-able.
UI design should be more like a cross-channel ad campaign (print, web and TV) than porting.
To be a successful cross-platform development environment, there would have to be lots of these. To my knowledge, only web apps are that widespread and used by the general public, not primarily for in-house apps.
So although end consumers might not see them, it will certainly take a long time for SWT or Swing to die. These are the same class of applications that are keeping IE 6 alive, after all.
Does this matter to Apple? I doubt it's significant, as most of these applications are probably running on Windows desktops already. Probably more significant is the legion of Java developers that have been vocal proponents of Macs over recent years. The numbers of such developers might not be so great in an absolute sense, but the amount of noise they create is disproportionate. And, more importantly, they are more motivated to build interesting stuff for the platform they use.
According to archgrove's post, Eclipse works on OpenJDK:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1820288
So Java crowd can continue to develop on Mac in Eclipse even without Apple-maintained Java in OSX.
Not going to happen.
Also, get the crappy APIs out of Java SE, like AWT and Swing, then the Java SE "standard" and the TCK needs updating, and then you've got a subset suitable for mobile phones, for which Oracle cannot collect revenue anymore.
Not going to happen.
I was under the impression that the IntelliJ IDE was a diamond, then I saw a dude use it in a screencast and the design looked grim.
Gotta feel for the JetBrains guys, I have a feeling that a good chunk of their users are on Macs and it's not clear that they'll have a way forward. It does look to me like Eclipse will be a viable option in future. Which, as an IntelliJ fan using a Mac, doesn't make me super happy.
That said, I think the original article was spot-on.
http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2010/Oct/msg00493.h...
JetBrains guys are very smart (I dislike Java as a language, but I continue to be impressed by IntelliJ) and I have no doubt they'd be able to switch a native layer if needed: they have all the motivation to (it's a commercial product).
Either build a real Cocoa interface, or go LimeWire's route and don't make it look native at all.
But it is the ugliest thing... just horrible, but if you can get past that, it is a great tool.
OS-X users are a big paying contingent for Jetbrains - so I expect they will find a way, one way or another, to make it run well.
Now Eclipse -- that's ugly, inside and out.
It's a great IDE, general usability is certainly better than Eclipse (it was meant to be an IDE as opposed to Eclipse which is a platform with an IDE built on top), but personally, font rendering was a deal break.
Their icons are, well, tasteless is the best way to describe them.
I know people don't often talk about usability and developer tools - but it really really matters. You spend a LOT of time on it - may as well fuss over it and make it right. IDEA gets so much right.... and this is also a good example of when user experience can be great, but design (graphic) not so great.
The engineers might now work on MacRuby, which is rumored to be the up-and-coming second language on OS X real soon now.
Thinking on it, I'd only be slightly surprised (and extremely delighted) if native/official (as opposed to experimental) MacRuby support for Xcode and the new Mac App Store was announced at the next WWDC.
If nothing else, it's provided the groundwork for my next software development project. The vast majority of tools my industry uses to perform a specific type of testing are Java-based, and more and more folks I run into are using Macs.
This is really about the JVM and the JVM is on the rise. I have no idea what impact this decision will have, but if it's negative if affects a lot more than Java.
> The company would want nothing less than an absolutely forensic code analysis to ensure there are no loopholes, stray imports or links, or anything else that a creative FSF lawyer could use to claim that Mac OS X links against the GPL’ed OpenJDK and must therefore itself be GPL’ed.
That is not how the GPL works. The GPL doesn't apply to the copyright holder (owner) of the code. The GPL applies to all the people who get the code from the owner. The owner can do what every they want.
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#releasenotes/Java/Ja...