Submitted by The jokes about two evils joining up are easily made, but I’ll try to refrain. Apple recently marked its Java implementation as deprecated. Well, we now know why: Apple and Oracle have announced that Apple will contribute to the OpenJDK project, effectively meaning that Java for Mac OS X will be developed by the OpenJDK community. Why do I have this image in my head?
Apple has always developed its own version of Java for Mac OS X, but the company is now handing over development to the OpenJDK project. Apple will supply key components for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X, including a 32bit and 64bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack, and the foundation for a new graphical client. The OpenJDK community will then be able to access and contribute to the project.
“We are excited to welcome Apple as a significant contributor in the growing OpenJDK community,” said Hasan Rizvi, senior vice president of development at Oracle, “The availability of Java on Mac OS X plays a key role in the cross-platform promise of the Java platform. The Java developer community can rest assured that the leading edge Java environment will continue to be available on Mac OS X in the future. Combined with last month’s announcement of IBM joining the OpenJDK, the project now has the backing of three of the biggest names in software.”
So, Apple joins OpenJDK, contributes a boatload of code and commits to Java on Mac OS X not long after Oracle sues Google over Android. I’m not prone to black helicopter thinking, but this smells incredibly fishy to me.
I don’t know, sounds like business as usual to me. Apple and Google have always had a love/hate thing going on, and Apple is heavily dependent on Java in OS X. I can certainly understand why they’d get deeper in with Oracle on this matter.
That doesn’t mean I have to like it, of course.
I feel dirty just reading the headline.
+1 to your post, I agree 100%. OSX does need Java and perhaps this could lead to a better Java implementation on OS X, not that I find the current one terrible.
I thought it odd that Apple would deprecate Java, but obviously this has been in the planning stages for a while now. Java has not always been the fastest technology on OS X, so I am hopeful that we will see some speed increases with this new open business…
It is? How so? I thought Apple was moving away from traditional desktop like apps. This sort of flies counter to what I was expecting. So like usual, Apple keeps us guessing always on our toes.
A lot of Java developers, develop on the Mac. I think it would be bad for them.
I find that difficult to believe for this reason:
http://blogs.sun.com/cmar/entry/java_1_6_finally_available
So Apple is evil for first not continuing their own slightly bespoke version of Java, and now apple is evil for contributing code to OpenJDK, and encouraging a more “standard” Java for OSX???
Response to the parent: how exactly is “Apple is heavily dependent on Java in OS X” ??? To my knowledge, there is no part of OSX that uses Java, not the kernel, not the desktop, not any delivered utilities. Of course, tons and tons of software is dependent on Java, but nothing directly in OSX is.
Apple’s Java has always been a few versions behind, and Apple’s implementation of AWT is frequently problematic (most Java apps that present a UI are coded on different platforms, where the layout of the AWT/SWING components are different then Apple’s, so they look/behave very badly. If the Java on OSX would just use the standard AWT components, sure Java apps would look different then Cocoa apps, but at least they would work correctly).
I do use a few Java apps on OSX, and this is great news to me, maybe I can finally have the same updated version of Java on OSX as I do Linux.
Besides some server tools, Apple doesn’t use Java itself all that much, that is true. And Apple doesn’t seem too interested in the server market anymore anyway.
No, where Java means the most to Apple is cross-platform development. More and more it seems these days, the OS is becoming less important and the software and services on top of it are where the money is. Witness the explosion of Android phones over the last two years. The user doesn’t know or care to know that it’s Linux and Java powering the device, all they care is that they can run all sorts of hip and trendy apps.
On the desktop the OS means even less, as most of what we do is web based now. From the beginning Java has been web-oriented, and the fact that it is available on all major and most minor platforms makes it a great way for developers to reach the widest possible audience. Apple knows this, and they also know that every app written in Java is a potential Mac app. For them not to continue to embrace Java would be unthinkable.
This is not surprising considering the fact that Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are really good friends. (Steve was the photographer at Larry’s wedding)
Was exactly my idea too when I first heard Apple would not be developing Java any further… It was simply impossible that Oracle didn’t know about this move up-front.
I also doubt that Java is that important for Apple anymore. They once tried to push it as the primary development language for OSX, but it never caught on… At this moment, Java on desktop is absolutely meaningless, and Apple is dropping their xserve line. On top of that, development for Apple’s iOS platform becoming popular resulted in a lot of new objective-C coders out-there using Xcode to develop on macs, making the jump to OSX development dead-easy. Java doesn’t fit in their picture, it only costs them a lot of money to maintain a version that’s lagging behind the official releases…
Actually, I would justify this move as part of their larger move to return the control of plugins back to the browser (they also started to unbundle Flash from OS X). There is really no way for them to keep up with all the security updates, and removing these responsibilities would also reduce the number of OS X vulnerabilities posted each month.
A possible move by Oracle to remain in the Java business as people are asking for them to be voted out…
Teh_Mick is the only one right so far.
None of you apparently know that Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are great friends as Teh_Mick noted.
Here’s probably what happened. When Steve and Larry (of course I can call them by their first names) were talking one day, which they do often, Larry probably asked why Apple was rolling their own Java when Sun, now Oracle, does that for every other platform. Or at least the open source java group does. After all, Oracle now owns Java.
Steve most likely answered that it was because Sun never did a good job of helping them but he was more than glad to pass it off to Oracle and the open source group since he (Steve) knows that Larry will make sure that it is done well.
Or at least that is the expectation.
As for the crazy conspiracy ideas…(shaking head).
These are professionals. They will not base business decisions on just being friends. They base them on what makes sense and quid pro quo. This seems like a combination between the two. You really think it’s a coincidence that three big behemoths of yore are all ganging up on Google at the same time? Companies that have a long history of working together?
At some point, things cease being coincidental. This point has been passed long ago on this one.
I don’t see why Oracle needs any encouragement from anyone to sue Google.
Oracle sued Google simply because if they win the case, they stand to make a lot of money. It’s all about money, plain and simple.
In addition, Apple handing over responsibility for OS X Java makes perfect sense as well. Apple is growing rapidly in market cap and product lines, but their software employee strength isn’t growing that rapidly. They are stretched thin, and it makes sense to decrease involvement in code that they no longer consider crucial.
At one time, Java was considered a very important languages by Apple, and so Apple wanted to make sure they stayed in control. At one time they contributed significant features to Java. Apple no longer considers Java so important, and see no reason to keep devoting significant developer resources to it.
Java is crucial for Apple but mostly for their servers, the entire webshop infrastructure runs on top of java, but it definitely makes sense. Apple has never really done a good job with java, it really showed that they do not have enough resources to maintain it.
So it is really better that Oracle now is at the helm.
It looks like to me that Apple was in the right position to go with an open source version, and they picked the one sanctioned by Oracle and IBM as opposed to the one being sued by Oracle. (Harmony, and probably more if Oracle goes beyond suing Google.)
Certainly going with Harmony or another open source JDK besides Oracle/IBM’s would be a noble idea, but not a very good business decision considering Oracle’s lawyers if one is interested in having a better-maintained (Apple clearly doesn’t have the resources or willpower to develop their own JDK) and a stable future for the JDK of OS X. (IBM probably will continue to have a stake in OpenJDK even if Oracle falters.)
Now, we all hate Oracle, I have an HTC phone that’s been hacked to run Android on my table, and don’t appreciate what they’ve done to Solaris or OpenOffice.org either, but this decision, from a business perspective, makes a lot of sense, and although it may “backstab Google” public corporations, even one headed by someone as mercurial as Steve Jobs, don’t really operate so pettily often.
“even”?
You’re the least bit surprised that he’d do something like this?
He’s been doing far worse things for decades.
He’s morally bankrupt.
The only morality that any CEO of a corporation has, whether it’s IBM, Google, Microsoft, or Apple, is to give shareholders value. Where value is defined as maximizing profit, in fact, they can face a shareholder lawsuit if they do otherwise, not to mention losing their job. If you’re outraged by this, demand legal reform for shareholder lawsuits and demand longer business cycles (i.e. the quarterly reports that create short-term pressure) for determining share value. Until then you will see a-holes like Elison and Jobs and Ballmer and so on, at the head of corporations; because the job requirement is to be one.
“Until then you will see a-holes like Elison and Jobs and Ballmer and so on, at the head of corporations; because the job requirement is to be one.”
How you can lump Ballmer in with Elison and Jobs is amazing. Elison and Jobs created or were the driving force behind their companies. Ballmer is the drive force behind being an idiot. The ONLY reason he got a job at Microsoft is Bill Gates.
It never made sense to me for Apple to write and maintain it’s own JVM/JDK for Mac OSX. I’m guessing that they did it because Jobs didn’t trust Sun to produce a decent looking and performing version for them.
But now that Oracle owns Java, Jobs and Ellison are good friends, both Oracle and IBM are behind OpenJDK, and Jobs/Apple is probably tired of maintaining their own JVM/JDK, Jobs is probably now comfortable releasing the Apple components of the JVM/JDK to the OpenJDK, and collaboratively maintaining it with Oracle and the OpenJDK community.
This just looks like a win for everyone.
I guess Apple never really liked the idea of something being truly open at all – so when OpenJDK seems to get locked down by Oracle’s Android/Google patent lawsuits over code bits that might very well be implemented in full compliance with the Java specifications, Oracle and IBM joining hands as well, it now looks much more like the good old days for Jobs, when you could be pretty sure that it was the big 4-5 companies that controlled the market and could do so without paying too much attention to the ongoing outside world…
Java is still a critical technology for apple’s back office operations, however it doesn’t help their App Store business model. This way the code gets all the improvements of the java vms without the need for as much engineering.
The real question I believe will be how this ties in with the Xserve discontinuation and the appearance that Mac OS X server isn’t a high priority. Apple is growing its web business, as seen by the massive DC they just built and are doubling.
I’ve worked with OS X server since Jaguar days, and I have trouble believing that apple use Snow Leopard Server to host their business. Between Server Admin creating invalid postfix configurations, incorrect bootpd (dhcp) configs and random corruptions of the Kerberos infrastructure I really am wondering how it was released this buggy. Fortunately recent patches seem a little better…… so fingers crossed.
OS X Server performance is also rather poor compared to Linux / Solaris / Windows, and with Microsoft moving their small business customers to cloud based services (SBS “Aurora”), maybe apple will do the same and discontinue OS X server. Already people are migrating XSan metadata controllers to linux (w/ StoreNext) and seeing a massive performance increase.
I have consulted on OS X deployments in government departments and universities here and the one thing that keeps on being a recurring feature is the only reason OS X server is deployed in larger organisations is to manage the mac fleet. Should Windows or Linux get this capability I don’t see any Mac OS X server deployments outside the small business.
I think apple is just biding its time to discontinue OS X server. Why pay for that level of engineering when you can use an off the shelf product for back end operations. Besides there has been no news of Lion Server so who knows if the product even has a future? If I had to guess I would say that if Lion Server isn’t a big seller, then expect there to not be a successor
Edited 2010-11-12 23:29 UTC
Well, say what you will about Oracle and Apple, but this is wonderful news. It will probably translate to Mac users actually getting new Java versions simultaneously with other platforms. And it means that the fears about Java no longer being well-supported on the Mac are allayed. Huzzah!
Now all we need is for Oracle to give in and license the damn TCK to Apache, and the Java world will start feeling stable again….
Edited 2010-11-13 00:32 UTC
I wonder what would happen if Google suddenly withdrew support for Google services, such as Youtube, Gmail, Google Maps, and whatever else they do, on Apple devices? So many iPhones would be unable to view Youtube videos, or view Google Maps. Suddenly the iPhone would not be such a hot prospect against the other smartphones out there.
EDIT: By “withdrew support”, I of course mean “actively blocked”. If suddenly an iPhone couldn’t watch a Youtube video, there’d be outrage.
Edited 2010-11-13 07:48 UTC
Google would never do that, they’d loose a massive percentage of the mobile market.
And even if they did they’d open themselves up to getting sued for infringing competition law, especially considering they have a competing platform on the market.
Google would lose a lot of money. Google currently makes more money from ads on iPhone than it does from ads on Android. Google pays Apple a lot of bucks to stay the default search option on the i-devices. They do that for a reason.
Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs joined forces trying to conquer the world. Will Fiona Apple come to the rescue? Stay tuned!
Riding a pink unicorn farting rainbows, no less.
Um, Thom, your link …
http://images.dpchallenge.com/images_challenge/0-999/775/800/Copyri…
Heh, God help anybody dumb enough to try to enforce a copyright on a horsey pic. BAD HORSEY! STRAIGHT TO GLUE 4 U!
I wonder if there’s any link with the xserver line drop? Oracle has hardware and server plans. How much could it be linked with Apple? Would Apple allow Oracle to sell its MacOS X server software?