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Apple officially kills JAVA on OS X with latest release

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nbw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 30, 2007
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0
It's official, Apple's Java (the only Java runtime available for the Mac OS X) is being deprecated as of the latest update.

"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.

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."

A lot of Java devs. use OS X to develop on, myself included. Looks like I'll be doing a reverse switch. This sucks.

See the release note [1] (expand "News and Noteworthy" and click on "Java Deprecation"). Also because of this you won't be able to get your Java application in the new OS X App Store.

-Noah

[1] Release note
 
Compile 'em all

Compile 'em all

macrumors 601
Apr 6, 2005
4,130
323
Nobody is stopping you from downloading another runtime from elsewhere. Just the one that Apple maintains will be deprecated.
 
N

nbw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 30, 2007
5
0
Compile 'em all said:
Nobody is stopping you from downloading another runtime from elsewhere. Just the one that Apple maintains will be deprecated.
Click to expand...

There isn't another vendor supported runtime other then Apple's. There's Soy Latte but that's hobby level project that relies on X11 - not even sure it passes the full Java Compatibility Test Kit. Unless Oracle picks up the torch here, and they probably won't, Java is pretty much dead on the Mac.
 
talmy

talmy

macrumors 601
Oct 26, 2009
4,726
332
Oregon
Interesting, but it isn't like there hasn't been warnings over the past few years to not develop in Java.

I've got a few Java apps I've done, specifically because I want portability across operating systems. But Apple has been pretty vocal recently that they want apps to be designed specifically for the Mac and not portable. While there has been lots of discussions about no Flash in iOS, there hasn't been any talk that I've seen about the lack of Java in iOS. Just more handwriting on the wall, I'd say.

Time to learn Objective-C and XCode.
 
F

Ferazel

macrumors regular
Aug 4, 2010
146
96
While kind of a bummer, from a user standpoint. As I do remember Java being one of the 3 platforms that MacOSX had built-in (as well as Carbon and Cocoa). Apple touted it pretty exclusively and actually converted some of the NS framework to Java to spur development. In truth, my Java hasn't seen much use as of late. The number of Java apps that I've used lately are pretty few and far between. The most popular I can think of is Eclipse and OpenOffice. However, I don't use them on a regular basis.

As for having to switch back, I don't know why you've been developing on a Mac for Java. Wasn't the Apple Java Runtime always a couple versions behind the Sun released versions anyways?
 
N

nbw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 30, 2007
5
0
Ferazel said:
While kind of a bummer, from a user standpoint. As I do remember Java being one of the 3 platforms that MacOSX had built-in (as well as Carbon and Cocoa). Apple touted it pretty exclusively and actually converted some of the NS framework to Java to spur development. In truth, my Java hasn't seen much use as of late. The number of Java apps that I've used lately are pretty few and far between. The most popular I can think of is Eclipse and OpenOffice. However, I don't use them on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

Certainly Java on the desktop is not a huge market. Enterprise Java is, though not necessarily for Apple, and the Mac was a great platform to develop on for it.

Ferazel said:
As for having to switch back, I don't know why you've been developing on a Mac for Java. Wasn't the Apple Java Runtime always a couple versions behind the Sun released versions anyways?
Click to expand...

No its been fairly up to date. The latest update to 1.6 (update 22) was only a few days behind the official Oracle release. The Mac is a great platform to develop Java in, esp. enterprise java.
 
D

doh123

macrumors 65816
Dec 28, 2009
1,304
2
This appears to just be totally stupid....

now if they take the Apple Java source and Oracle or OpenJDK or whoever keeps it up-to-date, and its just not included... well its not so bad.

as for the Mac App Store... I've read the rules on it, and Java or no Java, its an epic fail. They are basically setting it up to only get standard iOS level and quality of apps, nothing major.
 
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