Gosling blows lid off Jobs Java nonsense ( Java daddy deprecates Apple cult leader)

The Register ^ | 22nd October 2010 20:13 GMT | Cade Metz in San Francisco

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Steve Jobs has apparently weighed into the debate over Apple's decision to deprecate Java on the Mac, and his terse explanation was promptly deprecated by Java founder James Gosling.

According to MacRumors.com, a concerned Java developer emailed the Apple cult leader on Thursday to ask about Apple's plans for the platform, and as he's been known to do from time to time, Jobs responded.

"Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms," Jobs allegedly wrote. "They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it."

James Gosling's answer came via a blog post. "It simply isn't true," he said. But whatever the truth of Jobs' response, he didn't actually say what the company's plans are. It's still unclear whether Apple will actually kill Java for Mac – though this seems very likely – and he didn't say whether the company intends to help a third party build a replacement.

On Wednesday, as Apple unveiled a future version of Mac OS X and an imminent Mac App Store, the company also snuck out a brief announcement that Java had been "deprecated" on Mac OS X and that it may kill the platform altogether. "As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated," read the release notes from Apple's latest update to Java for Mac.

"This means that the Apple-produced runtime will not be maintained at the same level, and may be removed from future versions of Mac OS X. The Java runtime shipping in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, will continue to be supported and maintained through the standard support cycles of those products."

After deprecating Java, the company also announced that applications using deprecated technologies such as Java will not be allowed in the upcoming Mac App Store.

If Steve Jobs is killing Java on the Mac – as seems likely – he's also turning his back on the untold number of Java developers who do their work on Apple laptops and desktops, which – it's worth pointing out – includes Android developers. Java development kits such as Eclipse and IntelliJ and NetBeans won't themselves run without Java. "I cannot overstate what catastrophe this is," says one coder on Apple's Java developer mailing list. "If the future of Java on Mac is in doubt, then I have no other choice than going the Linux way...all the work I've done trying to get all developers converting to Mac is undone."

Simon Phipps – the former head of open source at Sun and a current board member with the Open Source Initiative (OSI) – agrees. "This has to be a big negative for all the many developers who prefer to use a Mac than Windows to develop their Java code," reads a blog post from Phipps. "Looks like the future for Ubuntu as a developer desktop just got several degrees brighter – does Steve Jobs ignore the Ballmer Imperative at his peril?"

Next page: The word from the Jobsian mountain top

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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[Minn]

Java development kits such as Eclipse and IntelliJ and NetBeans won't themselves run without Java.

Which is why you can relieve yourself, have a sandwich, and discuss last weekend's game with coworkers while waiting for any of them to start up.

[Washi]

I wonder how much of the less than 6% market share Mac has is made up of Java developers?

I'd think they would want to hold on to as many users and advocates as they could.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just came across this thread:

Apple clobbers the competition—Commentary: The carnage of Apple’s spectacular success

************************************EXCERPT INTRO**************************************

Posted on Fri 24 Sep 2010 05:34:41 PM PST by Swordmaker

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Apple Inc. is a Death Star. It pulls in most of what comes into its orbit and either overtakes or assimilates it.

The success of the company is particularly spectacular because it is largely a four-product enterprise, consisting of the iPad, iPod, Mac, and iPhone. It also produces a suite of supporting software that includes its OSX, the Safari browser, iTunes, and the App Store. These non-hardware products knit together the “iProduct” universe.

[Dr. Sivana]

Apple Inc. is a Death Star. It pulls in most of what comes into its orbit and either overtakes or assimilates it.

Agreed. I like Macs and iOS just fine, but Apple is not loyal to its allies.

They undercut the loyal chain of independent Apple dealers when they made special deals with CompUSA. Let Microsoft save its bacon and turned on them in that series of ads. At one point Adobe was considering putting Mac version of the crucial CS seies on the back burner, or even dropped. Apple begs them not to, and then turns around and bashes Flash.

Business is business, but this kind of behavior (and I won't even go through the NUMEROUS hardware problems with end users over the years, where Apple behaved badly) really precludes the possibly of having a romantic vision of Apple.

That said, they make some great products.

[Dilbert56]

Which is why you can relieve yourself, have a sandwich, and discuss last weekend's game with coworkers while waiting for any of them to start up.

Amen. BTW, some folks I worked with said that, if you disable McAfee virus scan before starting Eclipse, it comes up much faster. I think you can just disable "on access scan". Don't know how this applies to other antivirus pacakges though.

[Minn]

There’s nothing wrong with Java itself. I’ve just never understood why the people that make Java based IDEs don’t seem to notice what pigs they are. Netbeans, at least a year or two ago when I tried it out, was completely unusable on a very capable machine.

[stripes1776]

I wonder how much of the less than 6% market share Mac has is made up of Java developers?

Mac now has 10% market share in the US. And 25% of all current sales of client machines are Mac. With sales like that, the Mac will increase beyond 10% over the next year.

As for Java on the Mac, Oracle could easily provide a version for the Mac as it does for Windows, Linux, and Solaris. That would be up to Oracle in the future.

[Swordmaker]

Apple has "deprecated" Java in OSX... This may mean it will no longer be included in future OSX releases—PING!

Please!
No Flame Wars!
Discuss technical issues, software, and hardware.
Don't attack people!

Don't respond to the Anti-Apple Thread Trolls!
 PLEASE IGNORE THEM!!!

 

Apple and Java Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Terpfen]

Java development kits such as Eclipse and IntelliJ and NetBeans won't themselves run without Java.

Erm… yeah. Sort of captain obvious there. But so what? Either Sun will supply an OS X version of their JVM as they do with seemingly every other OS on the planet, or developers will just have to switch platforms.

Given how few apps use Java, it’s really not a big loss. The present and future of OS X app development is Objective-C, Cocoa, and Xcode.

[Terpfen]

None of what you describe is disloyalty in any egregious or intentional sense, but rather side effects of bigger decisions.

Apple’s dealings with CompUSA (you’re really reaching into the distant past here) had to do with increasing Apple’s retail presence at a time when the company was a hair’s breadth from bankruptcy. Independent Apple resellers weren’t getting it done, and the company had to do something else. CompUSA didn’t do much for Apple, either, by the way. This is why we now have Apple Stores, and why Apple’s retail presence at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target is best described as limited participation.

Apple’s shunning of Flash is a cumulative consequence of embracing H.264 a few years ago. You can’t promote H.264 as a one-size-fits-all solution for digital video (including web video) and then turn around and say Flash is okay. There’s also the matter of Flash being notoriously insecure and unstable…

Microsoft never saved Apple’s bacon. What are you talking about? The lawsuit that Apple won? The cash infusion was nice, but it was hardly life and death for their bottom line.

The behavior you’re describing—intentional disloyalty and betrayal—would best be applied to some of Microsoft’s actions. Remember Playsforsure, Microsoft’s silly attempt to semi-standardize the segments of the MP3 player market that the iPod didn’t already dominate? Manufacturers got on board with that, and then a few months later, Microsoft stabbed them in the back by canceling the program and releasing the Zune. And I’d imagine the pre-iPhone smartphone manufacturers were very annoyed with the overall stagnation of Windows Mobile, especially Windows Phone 7’s nearly two year delay. It’s a good thing Android came along when it did, otherwise smartphone makers would have had nothing to sell in response to the iPhone.

[Dr. Sivana]

The cash infusion was nice, but it was hardly life and death for their bottom line.

The cash infusion (which was not part of a lawsuit, more likely MS either wanting to keep Apple around to avoid anti-trust or maybe to keep the Office for Mac cash cow alive) was not so much necessary for the cash, but for the confidence other investors had in Apple. As you pointed out, they were on the ropes at the time.

I can go even farther back in history, like the 90 day warranties when the Quantum drives failed en masse about 6 months in, and Apple did not immediately make exceptions, but charged a king's ransom for replacement drives while getting warranty replacements from Quantum.

I understand that the independents "weren't getting it done." I also think there might have been a better way for Apple to treat them, a lot of them lost big.

I never said anything nice about Microsoft's behavior. And I think neither Apple nor Microsoft are the worst companies. Most evil are Symantec and Computer Associates, who buy nice products and either ignore them (Partition Magic) or turn them into garbage (the whole "Norton" franchise).

Regarding Adobe, you simply regurgitated Apple's arguments. I have not found Flash unstable on the Windows side (I have used both Mac (1984) and PC OSes (MS-DOS 1985, Windows 2.0 1987). A lot of big-time sites and apps use it. I still maintain that Adobe has been very, very good to Apple (Adobe, Aldus and Microsoft were all essential to the Macs success.) and that Apple has not been very diplomatic in return.

I can also say that Apple has done some good things besides good hardware. Their dislike of the high Postscript royalties that Adobe charged (but also was the lynchpin for real dtp) prompted Apple to develop TrueType. Apple licensed it to MS, who ran with it while Mac Pros clung to their large Adobe type libraries and ATM, suspicious of the quality of TT. Truetype worked out well, and licensing to Microsoft actually made Windows more of a threat.

Apple also singlehandedly jump-started the USB market. MS ignored all those motherboards with USB, and the printer companies etc. didn't feel like making USB printers when all the PCs had parallel ports. The iMac had ONLY USB and NIC ports. That fopened up the market.

Nonetheless, Apple has not always been a trustworthy partner in the industry. They can be an ally, but never a friend.

[af_vet_rr]

I still maintain that Adobe has been very, very good to Apple (Adobe, Aldus and Microsoft were all essential to the Macs success.) and that Apple has not been very diplomatic in return.

I've found the opposite - Adobe has dragged their feet when it comes to Mac versions, whether it's Photoshop or Flash. Flash has been ridiculous on Mac OS X for years and Adobe only seemed to really care when Apple started making noise about excluding it from the mobile side. Anytime my browsers beachballed in the past few years, I knew instantly that it was probably Flash related. Photoshop, same thing. Photoshop should have moved away from Carbon and moved to 64-bit at least one version back.

As for Java, to address what somebody said earlier, Java is not going away on Macs anytime soon. Jobs and Larry Ellison are friends and this isn't some kind of spat or anything between Apple and Oracle. Jobs is right, it's not the best way to do things when Apple is always rolling out an older version of Java, from a security point of view.

The distribution of Java and Flash on Macs, and Windows at times, have always bugged me from a security point of view. There needs to be much more elegant ways to distribute both. Firefox does try and warn you that Flash is outdate when you update Firefox.

[Mr. Blonde]

Apple is no longer shipping Flash with their computers so you can download the newest version when you get your computer.

[Terpfen]

The cash infusion (which was not part of a lawsuit, more likely MS either wanting to keep Apple around to avoid anti-trust or maybe to keep the Office for Mac cash cow alive) was not so much necessary for the cash, but for the confidence other investors had in Apple.

That wasn’t the point. Microsoft wasn’t trying to buy the fig leaf of competition. That’s never been their MO.

I can go even farther back in history, like the 90 day warranties when the Quantum drives failed en masse about 6 months in, and Apple did not immediately make exceptions, but charged a king's ransom for replacement drives while getting warranty replacements from Quantum.

Sounds to me like you have issues letting go. Digging up 20 year old events that happened after Steve Jobs was forced out? Really?

I understand that the independents "weren't getting it done." I also think there might have been a better way for Apple to treat them, a lot of them lost big.

Apple treated them just fine. The company nearly died because Apple had lost control of its core products, including licensing OS X to third party OEMs. Sales crashed through the basement. This isn’t a loyalty thing, it’s a survival thing.

Regarding Adobe, you simply regurgitated Apple's arguments.

No, I didn’t. Apple has never really been vocal about H.264 being a/the reason for keeping Flash at arm’s length. They’ve talked about Flash being the leading cause of crashes on OS X instead.

I have not found Flash unstable on the Windows side…

I fail to see how Flash’s performance on Windows is relevant to its performance on OS X. You should know that not everything transitions well from one platform to another. Example: Firefox is great on Windows, not so much on OS X.

Nonetheless, Apple has not always been a trustworthy partner in the industry. They can be an ally, but never a friend.

Just like everyone else.

[Dr. Sivana]

That wasn’t the point. Microsoft wasn’t trying to buy the fig leaf of competition. That’s never been their MO.

Whether it was their MO or not, it happened. They certainly didn't do it for the investment value.

Digging up 20 year old events that happened after Steve Jobs was forced out?

The 90 day warranty in the US(after the rest of the industry went to one year) was initiated under Jobs. Sculley consciuosly kept a lot of the Jobs approach in his way of doing things (which was better than the Spindler and Amelio ways, to be sure). I can happily dig up old events on a variety of platforms. Microsoft had delayed an ISA 286 add-on board so long, that by the time it came out, it was obsolete. If you are going to talk about Apple's OR MS's M.O., going back is necessary. Also, I was discussing Apple, not Jobs, necessarily. Some of the biggest victories (TrueType, the switchover to PowerPC) happened without him, as well as some of the biggest debacles (Quickdraw GX, Mac IIfx)

Apple did not treat the independents "fine" even before the company went into survival mode. Did you know any of these independent vendors?

Regarding Flash, Apple has said enough about H.264 and HTML5. Since Apple is now an Intel platform, there should be no serious problems in making Flash work well in Mac OSX. It would be better for Apple to work behind the scenes to make Flash work better in OSX. While we are on the subject, Quicktime for Windows is truly AWFUL. Apple should put a little more into it.

I call them as I see them, my long time working with this stuff (going back to the 8 bit days), sometimes provides perspective. I am no fan boy, and see good in he major players (Windows, MacOS, Linux). If you look back, I generally defend Apple, but the company has made plenty of strategic errors and some less than altruistic moves.

[Dr. Sivana]

Photoshop should have moved away from Carbon and moved to 64-bit at least one version back.

Agreed, but except for Photoshop, the Windows version is also still 32-bit. I've run both Mac and Windows CS4 (not on CS5 yet) yet, and found them to be comparable, though I am not a high end graphics apps user so others would be more qualified to make that call.

[hugorand]

Given how few apps use Java, it’s really not a big loss. The present and future of OS X app development is Objective-C, Cocoa, and Xcode.

Java is primarily used on the backend, the server-side of enterprise deployments, not the front end, application side. However, many engineers prefer using MACs for development.

I use Parallels on the Mac, so it's no big deal to run Windows or Linux virtually If I need the latest JAVA which may not be available on OS X.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"If Steve Jobs is killing Java on the Mac – as seems likely"

Nothing of the sort. Apple just wants Oracle to shoulder the burden of its own programming environment, as it does for other platforms. Two other points, unmentioned: (1) Oracle is lawyering-up and subjecting the community to closer scrutiny (just ask Google). (2) Jobs and Larry Ellison are close friends. There is every reason to expect that their companies will be working more closely together, not less.

All will be well, and the out-of-dateness that has afflicted Apple's java will be a thing of the past.