Apple and the future of Java

I agree with the main premise of the article: that Steve Jobs isn't the one dealing a blow to Java, he is just getting rid of the white elephant that is already on its way down.<p>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.<p>If Java is losing popularity as a desktop app programming language it won't be because of Apple.

<i>I looked at javax.sound yesterday and estimated it would take me 4-6 weeks, full-time, to do a production-quailty port using Core Audio. I’ll bid the project out at $20,000.</i><p>How about Kickstarter?<p><i>Desktop Java is a ruinously expensive legacy that they need to do something about.<p>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><p>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.

&#62; The Java crowd will (...) have to make a choice: either use Windows or Linux for development, or get away from the IDEs (...) on the Mac.<p>According to archgrove's post, Eclipse works on OpenJDK:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1820288" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1820288</a><p>So Java crowd can continue to develop on Mac in Eclipse even without Apple-maintained Java in OSX.

Apple open-sourcing their work to be included in OpenJDK would also require copyright-assignment to Oracle.<p>Not going to happen.<p>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.<p>Not going to happen.

I think the problems with [non-native] GUIs on the Mac are compounded by their developers likely not having as much passion for look &#38; feel as Cocoa-heads to start with, regardless of the quality of the APIs.<p>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.

Apple plays a long game, and they're not afraid to toss stuff under the bus. Now consider what these Apple engineers might now be working on, if not Oracle's Java and JVM pieces. Some language past Java? A replacement for Objective C? Both?

I don't think Apple's decision is going to be a death-rattle to Java on OS X, but it provides an interesting perspective.<p>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.

I'm confused by everyone focusing on Java. "Java's on the decline", "I don't mind if Java goes away", etc, etc.<p>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.

I think he makes a good case for himself in the article, though I wonder how much effort it really costs to maintain an already written port. However, he is quite mistaken about the possible side effects of Apple licensing the code under the GPL:<p>&#62; 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.<p>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.

Are Apple going to ship any sort of Java runtime with 10.7? I (and some of my team) use Intellij on OSX. Are we not going to be able to upgrade to 10.7?

am I the only one who thinks JDK 7 (for OSX) will be released by Oracle when Lion is launched? at the end of last year they released JavaME 3 for osx. so it wouldn't be that far off