All due nastyness to apple is deserved - they certainly haven't
received their fair share of rightful abuse by the IT community, but,
a little reality check:
On windows, and on linux, there is no java at all. It has to be
installed separately. This is supremely annoying. There are odds the
linux user has e.g. debian/ubuntu openjdk-6 installed, and on windows
there's a chance that the manufacturer has shipped an auto-updating
JDK out of the box, but there's no certainty there. On macs, at least,
you know there's always a java, and a well integrated, if non-
standard, way to deploy.
The same thing which is making java show up by default on linux (it's
open sourcey goodness) opens the door for apple java, too: if you can
convince a user to install soylatte, then, you're up to the very
latest date. Now, sure, this is an inferior java in regards to applets
and graphics - the very things the 6u10 are updating, so I'm jumping
the gun a bit. Consider it a call to arms for anybody out there that
knows a thing or two about Cocoa. But there's no reason why it can't
happen. And the more Apple waffles on their java implementations, the
more likely it becomes.
So, apologies for the interruption; continue yelling at Apple. And let
me add a little to the fire:
It's doubleplus retarded that Apple just doesn't spill so much as a
single verb about how far along they are in regards to developing new
versions of the apple JVM. I get the whole: Unlike everyone else, we
make the tough decisions just like that if it benefits the end
product, which is fairly incompatible with pre-announcing anything.
It's not worth it for such a tiny little detail that no one other than
developers really care about. Just dump this stuff with the catch-all
NDA on the Apple Developer Network thing. It prevents major news
sources from writing about it, but it also means every developer
pretty much knows but with the usual 'it's an apple rumour, so don't
take it as gospel'. Sounds like a fine deal to me.
On Oct 20, 1:52 pm, Jess Holle <
je...@ptc.com> wrote:
> This is a decision Apple has clearly made for its customers :-)
>
> In the consumer market, ignoring Mac OS X might not be possible, but in
> a lot of realms the Mac is totally ignored due to issues like this.
>
> I used to use a Mac as my primary platform and gripe about this. That
> was before cross-platform technologies like Java were well established,
> so I didn't blame Apple -- now I do at least when it comes to Java.
> [When someone writes an app against Windows APIs they were setting out
> to pretend that Windows == the world, so I clearly still blame the app
> vendor if they don't bother to port at that point.]
>
> That said, Apple recently released Java 6 Update 7 (only for their newer
> boxes, of course), so if you only care about the "up to date" portion of
> Apple's market Update 10 /may/ not be all that far off. Cute thing is