Today, Apple is unleashing Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard onto the world. It's already available to people in Australia and New Zealand (you liking it, Kaiwai?), and Europe and the US will follow later today. There's an article on what's new for Ruby developers, while others want to figure out what Leopard means to the 'enterprise' (I love those silly business terms). Update by AS: My copy of Leopard was slated for a 10AM delivery, but didn't arrive. I called FedEx and a CSR told me that an internal memo was just released; Apple has apparently waved the shipping deadline for all packages today and requested delivery be rescheduled at the end of the business day. Update 2 by AS: Ok, we've received our copy. How about you other US'ers? 
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Member since:2007-02-14
I was thinking about your comment about bad Java support out of the box. I started thinking which operating system that includes Java.
Windows don't include any version of Java, so far I know.
Most Linux distributions does not include Java out of the box, because legal reason. This will change very quickly now when Java has been GPL:ed
Mac OSX includes Java out of the box, perhaps not the latest version.
It is fairly easy to install the latest Java (JRE and JVM) on all the above mentioned systems.
So I'm a bit curious about which operating systems you are running now, so may I humbly ask what OS you are running?
Member since:2005-08-22
Member since:2005-11-14
Member since:2007-02-02
Member since:2005-07-06
It has nothing to do with legal reasons and everything to do with GPL zealotry. Sun made it perfectly legal for Linux distributions to redistribute Java almost a year or more ago now.
Member since:2005-07-11
Hey, I'm one of the lucky ones to get it here in Australia...
-----------------------------------
$java -version
java version "1.5.0_13"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_13-b05-237)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_13-119, mixed mode, sharing)
-----------------------------------
Apple is working on version 6, but obviously other priorities got in the way...
You'll love XCode though...
So far, I am loving it, seems faster than Tiger, but haven't taken it through it's paces yet...
Setting up gmail in Mail.app is so easy, very suite, and iChat very nice too...
Wow, iCal starts in less than a second (I have a 2.16 iMac 24").
Terminal has tabs
Just checking to see how fast things load, very impressed...
Still looking at all the new stuff...
Member since:2007-02-21
Huge disappointment. I'm primarily a Java developer by trade and bought a Mac last year. I didn't think Apple's lag in Java releases would be that big of deal. Truth is, it's very annoying.
I don't really know what you can do about it though. One thing comes to mind and that's to release their jvm/jdk implementations under a license similar to Open JDK. I wouldn't hold my breath though.
Of course other OS's don't come with Java installed and that's fine because when deploying my software I can always distribute the JRE as an optional download. With OS X that's not possible. So in my opinion it's worse because there is less choice for the developers which ultimately results in less choice for the consumers.
Member since:2005-07-06
The thing is that other oses do include java vms. If you walk into a retail store and run "java -version" from a prompt, most will give you java 5 (some java 6). MS doesn't ship it, but Sun has oem agreements with most vendors.
OpenSuSe includes sun's java 5 and ubuntu is steadily making it easier.
Of course, most of those are still stuck with 5 by default as well. Hopefully they will move to 6 as the default within 6 months or so.
Member since:2005-07-06
In case it doesn't, Leopard has nothing to do with 'enterprise' whatsoever.
Lame Java support is what always prevented me from buying a Mac.
I rather like it. Sure not the latest versions, but it comes with all the programming languages i would ever need :
tom-goossenss-imac:~ Tyr$ java -version
java version "1.5.0_13"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_13-b05-237)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_13-119, mixed mode, sharing)
tom-goossenss-imac:~ Tyr$ python --version
Python 2.5.1
tom-goossenss-imac:~ Tyr$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-06-07 patchlevel 36) [universal-darwin9.0]
tom-goossenss-imac:~ Tyr$ perl --version
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "UTF-8"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
This is perl, v5.8.8 built for darwin-thread-multi-2level
Copyright 1987-2006, Larry Wall
Edit: forgot about objective C + Applescript :-)
Edited 2007-10-26 19:03 UTC
Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2006-01-03
Member since:2007-06-22
The company I'm currently working at still uses JDK 1.4.2 for critical applications/middleware as the virtual machines are rock solid after years of usage and bugfixing. If I'd have to hazard a guess I would say that it will need years until JDK 6 will be used for large projects.
Edited 2007-10-26 20:50
Member since:2006-04-18
Member since:
2007-02-02
Does it support Java 6? This isn't mentioned in the official new features list: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html
In case it doesn't, Leopard has nothing to do with 'enterprise' whatsoever.
Lame Java support is what always prevented me from buying a Mac.
Edited 2007-10-26 12:56