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Sun Bringing Java to iPhone

hok said:
Too bad, Apple won't authorize them:

Apple iPhone SDK Agreement: “No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)… An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise.”
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Sounds like that completely kills Java on the iPhone. Apple did not put Java on the iPhone from the beginning for a multitude of reasons including having control over what gets loaded and how it is loaded.

I guess SUN did not read the agreement, LOL.
 
JAVA - Slowing down computer hardware since 1991. Coming Soon to the iPhone!

This is a non-event. Save the time, Sun. We don't want Java.
 
About time. All we need is for Adobe to use this as an excuse to write a flash implementation for both desktop and iPhone that isn't crap.

Doug
 
eastcoastsurfer said:
Understood. This is why choice is a good thing. You get to avoid java, while others don't have to.
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personally, i think Sun's announcement is less about choice and more about fear of losing market share. with this announcement, developers who already code with Java are less likely to spend the time learning the iPhone SDK.

the iPhone SDK is a developers platform, just like Java. they compete. if every developer were to become comfortable with the iPhone SDK, there would be no need for Java in what is sure to become a huge market. Sun knows this, so they're doing whatever they can to keep developers from using the iPhone SDK now. and with no release date set for an iPhone version of Java, Sun could just keep pushing it off, continuing to keep developers away from the native SDK by saying it's coming soon. in reality, this announcement may lead to less apps on the iPhone, not more.

and let's just be honest, while Java is very capable and has a place in the developer world, native apps are always better. let's stick to better apps for the iPhone.
 
I don't foresee anyone really utilizing java apps on the iPhone, and it is an optional download, so no harm done in its availability.

So then why would Sun bother to port it? ADVERTISING! They (and everyone else) want their company's name to appear on (or in correlation with) the iPhone. Who cares if anyone actually uses it. For the cost of development plus $99, they can claim an association with the world's coolest smart phone.

Java, by the way, is an excellent technology in the server arena. Just keep the GUI away from it, and it shines for the mere reason of portability. So let's tone down all the melodrama of putting daggers through the heart of Java. Perhaps it just needs to be given a restraining order against coming within 50 feet of the desktop. ;)
 
confirmed said:
personally, i think Sun's announcement is less about choice and more about fear of losing market share. with this announcement, developers who already code with Java are less likely to spend the time learning the iPhone SDK.

the iPhone SDK is a developers platform, just like Java. they compete. if every developer were to become comfortable with the iPhone SDK, there would be no need for Java in what is sure to become a huge market. Sun knows this, so they're doing whatever they can to keep developers from using the iPhone SDK now. and with no release date set for an iPhone version of Java, Sun could just keep pushing it off, continuing to keep developers away from the native SDK by saying it's coming soon. in reality, this announcement may lead to less apps on the iPhone, not more.

and let's just be honest, while Java is very capable and has a place in the developer world, native apps are always better. let's stick to better apps for the iPhone.
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I could of not said it better myself.
 
Cool. Now I can do everything I wanted in a more limited and slower way.

Companies could move their junk onto the iPhone more quickly, but will suck and will have a lower quality user experience.
 
This is good news, to be sure. Although, I'd rather it be a complete J2SE implementation or maybe something like Personal Java which is what I had on my Sharp Zaurus (Linux-based PDA.)

Things are looking good for Java to spite no Java 6 on OS X. Remember that Java is used in Blu-Ray as well- BD-J.

This also gives developers a choice. We won't necessarily be forced into learning Objective C.
 
Sun is doing this for some internal-use reason

cybereal said:
Yes, it is great that some random portion of crappy JavaME games will suddenly run poorly or incorrectly on the iPhone.
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Do you really think Sun is spending is kind of money, (I bet it will cost on the order of $250K) So that people who are not their customers can run third party games on a phone Sun doesn't sell.

No, Sun has some internal reason for putting Java on the phone. Possibly sun has lots of software already written and they's like to put it on the phone. One thing I can think of is all the sysadmin GUIs that run on Solaris. Wouldn't it be great if you could access the server room from a shirt pocket device.

When I was in that job I wrote a lot of scripts that would check the status of our servers and then send a text message to my cheap not-smart phone. I think every UNIX admin does this. Wouldn't it be nice if Solaris 12 came with a remote Java interface? No more scripts - I could read the server logs from a little app that runs on the phone.

So, we should be thinking about why Sun is doing this. It's not so that Apple's customers can play third party games Although for most iPhone users this will be the only result they will see.
 
In order for this to work, each Java app would have to be distributed inside a normal Cocoa app that includes the JVM, because you can't write system plugins/services for the iPhone using the standard SDK.
 
Will this add java support to Safari for the iPhone ?
there are some web sites I have to access for work and they require java.
Java support would be a life saver and free me up to go do stuff on weekends where I'm on call.
 
liberty4all said:
So where is the latest Java for Mac OS X desktops, SUN?!
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I think Apple maintains Java for Mac desktops, if I recall correctly Sun offered to do it (like they do for windows) but Apple wanted to customize it or something.
 
gmon750 said:
Yeah, it's called Windows Mobile. Sell your iPhone to someone more worthy.
*sheesh* Whiner-alert!
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Nice Apple apologist response, fanboy. The complaint about lack of Windows Media Support on the iPhone is legitimate. Would you complain if you didn't have Windows Media support on your Mac? Or would you answer that the solution is to buy Windows and sell your Mac to someone "more worthy".

It is comments like yours that give Apple fans a bad name to the rest of the world. And frankly I don't come to these forums and post much as I used to because there are a lot of people like you on the boards these days. Grow up.
 
There's a large number of applications written for mobile Java.

Apple would have all the companies port to Cocoa Touch.

This would let these devices run a potential huge number of legacy business applications on the iPhone.
 
Couldn't Adobe do the same thing with Flash? That's what got me excited about this story, because then Apple would have to turn down the CHOICE of people to try it and generate (yet another) big stink.

BTW- after posting this from my iPod (shuffle), I really hope iPhone developers ( and Apple with Mail, Notes, etc) have landscape mode keyboards built in .
 
Hopefully they succeed, but have they read Section 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement?
An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).
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I'm assuming that since it will be free, Apple will allow it.

<]=)
 
onionperson654 said:
Couldn't Adobe do the same thing with Flash? That's what got me excited about this story, because then Apple would have to turn down the CHOICE of people to try it and generate (yet another) big stink.

BTW- after posting this from my iPod (shuffle), I really hope iPhone developers ( and Apple with Mail, Notes, etc) have landscape mode keyboards built in .
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I'm actually more excited about the possabilaiy of AIR than just flash for some reason.
 
Of course, if you've used Cydia, you'd know that this has already been implemented to a sufficient degree. It uses JamVM, and a UIKit wrapper that the package maintainer wrote.

It works well enough, but the big question mark is whether or not Apple would go out of its way to do a bridge. The answer is pretty flatly a resounding "no," if their growing disdain for Java support on Mac OS X is to be taken into account. That's ignoring Steve Jobs' absolute trouncing of Java in statements last year.
 
Java hate? Get a life.

I'm a reluctant Java developer. I've tried several times to get in to Cocoa and Objective-C and just can't get the hang of it. It seems cluttered and confusing and too much like C. Java is much easier to understand and to write good portable and modular code for.

In my experience, the problem with Java isn't the language itself, its Swing - the built-in GUI layer in Java for applications. Swing is an approximation of everything - for example: buttons are 'lightweight' versions of OS buttons. Not an actual OS button, but a Java representation of that button. This means Java Swing applications look and feel just not quite right. Its got better in recent Java versions (1.5 and 1.6 notably), but the bad quality of the apps in the past has cost the Java brand dearly.

However the new way to write Java UI applications is to replace the Swing UI layer with something called SWT. Unlike the lightweight approximations of widgets, SWT gives you actual native buttons just like Cocoa would give you if coding with Objective-C. SWT is the way Java applications should always have been, and it would have prevented all this Java-hating.

Java applications definitely do not have to be slow or fugly.

Also, JavaME is crap. If you're going to be writing Java, you want to be writing full-blown Java (like JavaSE).

Java is a great language. Relatively easy to learn (certainly compared to Objective-C, it would seem), and really useful if you want to write portable applications that can run on all the major platforms. Just cut it some slack, yeah?
 
thread summary and questions ...

If, (as it seems), it will not be possible for Sun to write a Java engine in the normal sense of enabling apps to be downloaded and executed on the iPhone, and since there will without doubt be many, many much slicker and more popular native games written for the iPhone long before any Java interpreter is available ...

Could someone with knowledge of Java explain what it is that Sun *is* attempting to put on the iPhone? I could see how a Java plug-in for mobile Safari might make sense, but anything else seems:

a) expressly forbidden by the SDK agreement.
b) unlikely to be popular with anyone anyway.

Are they talking about putting a Java engine inside each Java app sold through the app store? If so, could someone with knowledge of Java post as to how large this would make a Java app on the iPhone?

This doesn't make any sense to me. It would be easier, faster, and safer to port any Java apps that were truly needed to native ones wouldn't it? And they would have much smaller footprints as well. It seems to me that once you realise that the model of downloading and executing Java code is broken, that "doing Java" on the iPhone becomes just a choice of languages for developing apps.
 
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