Great for Java and Apple

Apple announcing that they are not interested in maintaining Java anymore couldn't be better news for Java. As everyone knows that worked with Java on OSX knows it is a horror story. The release is probably the buggiest versions of Java I've been working with.

Apple, have never really understood or been interested in understanding Servers or server side programming.

For example, I had installed a 1G Ethernet at home, made sure that all switches and hubs actually were 1G. My MacPro had its 2 port 1G Ethernet card which i hocked up booth ports so that I would be able to do VPN and run on the local network at the same time. However network test after network test, showed embarrassingly slow. I managed to reach 30 MB/s where the theoretical limit lays around 120 MB/s. The OSX kernel is so badly written when it comes to networking it should really put a red face on Jobs, when he says that the latest machine is 'Amazingly fast'. Threading is another is even a sadder story.

I think that the point in time is critical for this being good news for Java developers. When 20% of all sold PCs is a Mac. I wonder how high that number is for the high-end PCs, the ones developers often buys. I doubt it is anything but higher, a lot higher!

So why is this critical? If you've ever been to a Java developer conference you'll quickly see that 70-80% of all laptops have an eaten apple on it. If Oracle would not pick up the ball, it would probably leave a huge part of the developer community looking at other languages. With all the things happening (or the things that never seems to happen like Java 7, closures etc) in the Java world it is certainly not the time to force developers to choose between OSX and Java.

I do not think that many would abandon their favorite hardware/OS for Java. Even though the lousy server properties of the Mac. Oracle cannot afford to alienate their biggest developer group, even though they are not using any of the Oracle operating systems.

It would be reasonable to think that Apple will 'give' the AWT code for Cocoa. If that would be the case a Java version on OSX made by Oracle could be released in 6-12 months.

However if Apple for some reason would not give the source to Oracle. I think there is a significantly longer time to release.

Which may be acceptable by developers, since the majority of Java developer are using Eclipse anyways. It is far from the ubiquitous Java model. But if Oracle were to release a headless version of Java for OSX, Eclipse would still maintain SWT for it.

It is certainly interesting times!