Re: Getting started with Java on a Mac
On 1/13/2012 11:47 PM, Gene wrote:
On Jan 14, 5:13 am, Peter Duniho<NpOeStPe...@NnOwSlPiAnMk.com> wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:12:45 -0400, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
[...] It's been my experience for years (and I've used Java on Macs
going back to when Java appeared) that Apple support for Java on Classic
Mac and Mac OS X has been very good.
Granted I am not a Java GUI guy, I may have written half a dozen trivial
AWT or Swing apps ever in over a decade, and most of them not on a Mac
anyway, so there could be some cruftiness when it comes to that side of
things, but overall Mac Java support is very good. IMO.
My experience with Java and the Mac is not as extensive as yours, going
back only five years. But I'd say that given that Apple's Java on the Mac
was still stuck at 1.5 when 1.7 was on the verge of release, there's
justification for considering Java on the Mac to be lagging. Note also the
problem that on other platforms you can update to the latest Java easily,
while on the Mac (at least historically) the only way to get the latest
Java release was to buy the latest OS version as well.
Maybe with the OpenJDK stuff, Java on the Mac will become less-proprietary,
more up-to-date, etc. And I'd certainly agree that Java development on the
Mac is viable, even if the API lags behind the rest of the world. But I'd
definitely not call Apple's support of Java on the Mac "very good". I
wouldn't even call it close to that.
It's something like a red herring to say Apple support for Java is
this or that. Certainly Microsoft provides less support under
Windows. Ditto for Linux. Apple is unique in embracing Java at all.
No.
IBM support Java on z/OS.
IBM support Java on i.
IBM support Java on AIX.
HP support Java on HP-UX.
HP support Java on OpenVMS.
SUN/Oracle support Java on Solaris.
This is the Java model. The OS vendor support Java
for their platform.
It was even supposed to be the case for Windows, but SUN
and MS ended up in court and MS stopped developing Java/non-Java.
Moreover, Apple's policy of associating a Java release with each OS X
release is a more sane lifecycle management strategy than the once-
every-two-months routine release of the JVM/JDK. Ask any Windows user
who runs it what they think of the Java update daemon!
They probably like that Java behaves similar to Windows itself,
AcrobatReader, Flash, FireFox, ThunderBird etc..
Automatic updating is standard today.
In all, the policy of frequent releases seems for more than 15 years
to have fostered a Java culture of half-baked architectures and
okayness with bugs a la amateur night. Ultimately, this is why Java
has never reached the tipping point as a web dynamic content
mechanism. What a shame... Java could have been Flash. And the
world would have been a better place.
Upshot: If Oracle ultimately makes an annual, high quality Java
release for all platforms, life is going to be better for everyone
than the current ad hoc mish mosh.
Just an opinion...
Given that it is typical security fixes that drive the release
of Java updates, then updating once a year would be a complete
disaster.
Arne