Why is JAVA so poor on mac?

Make sure you've got all the updates through Software Update. You might also need to turn off the Safari Pop-up Blocker, if those alerts are implemented via new windows appearing on the screen.

Regarding the crash, do you mean the Java app crashes, or the whole browser? There is a possibility of a bug in the Java program you are running that is only exposed on Mac. Does the app maker consider Mac a supported platform? If so, see if they have any ideas.

In the end, you are right: Java is not top-notch on Mac. The solution might be to run it in Windows.

 

Do you know which version of the Java VM your app is written for?

 

Did Sun ever agree to take on Java Development on Mac?

I know there was talk about it.

 

Apple worked closely with Sun on the MacOS X Java VM. You will remember that Microsoft developed a highly non-standard VM that was optimized for Windows and incompatible with the VMs developed for other platforms. Sun sued Microsoft. As a result of the suit, the Redmond Monopoly killed its non-standard VM in favor of Sun's standard VM.

I have the nagging suspicion that the OP's Java app was developed for Microsoft's Java VM.

 

Apple's Java VMs are customized versions of Sun's HotSpot VM. They usually lag behind official Sun releases for other operating systems. Apple's Java 1.6 implementation is limited to 64-bit Intel Macs and is only used in 64-bit web browsers (I'm not aware of any for OS X.)

OpenJDK works on OS X, but it doesn't have a web browser plugin (and uses X11 to implement Java's built-in graphics libraries.)

This is patent nonsense. Development on Microsoft Java products was discontinued in 1998 and the product was officially discontinued in 2001. Microsoft stopped distributing it altogether in 2003. If you really had a Java program that used features only in Microsoft's JVM, it wouldn't run properly on any platform without the Microsoft JVM - and it certainly wouldn't run on any recent Windows machines.

Also, VMs and class libraries are supposed to be optimized for the host operating system - all the platform-specific stuff goes there. If an application is targeted for and only works with a certain vendor's standards-compliant VM, it's not really a Java application.